Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-20-Speech-3-399"
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"en.20080220.17.3-399"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I want to begin by thanking the rapporteur who has done tremendously good groundwork but also has managed the negotiations between the different political groups excellently.
As someone said earlier, this is a big challenge. Not a threat, but a challenge for the European Union. I will try to keep to the three main areas that form the structure of the rapporteur’s report.
First of all, birth rate. We have too low birth rates in Europe and I share the view that this is due, to a large extent, to inadequate political decision-making. It relates to men and women today wanting to be, and being needed, on the labour market but, at the same time, wanting to become parents and have children. We must encourage this combination in the Member States so that parents, both men and women – and this is important to stress – can combine their working life and parenthood. It relates to compensation for parenthood based on the principle of loss of income, linked to working life, at a high level so that people can stay at home and not need to suffer financially.
Secondly, we need to expand high-quality childcare. We have a long way to go. We have targets, but few Member States meet the targets for the expansion of childcare at present.
Then it concerns older people on the labour market. It is a paradox that we enter working life later and leave it sooner. We must create conditions with various measures in relation to health and safety at work, the possibility of further training, and flexible solutions in the grey area between working life and retirement, in order to enable parents to remain in work.
Lastly, migration. We need people who come from other parts of the world in our society in order to develop and maintain our welfare society. We must therefore create an integration policy where they are integrated into our society and are not excluded. We must assist that policy, as there is no conflict with our welfare society. On the contrary, it is a prerequisite for developing it."@en1
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