Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-23-Speech-2-519"
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"en.20101123.39.2-519"2
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"I am very happy that the fundamental principles of this flagship initiative to boost and improve employment in Europe and finally reach an ambitious target by 2020 have been welcomed. We are, of course, open to discussing the various details now and at a later stage.
These are initiatives for 10 years and for all Member States. It is not about addressing short-term emergency financial situations in certain Member States. We cannot assume that all the 10 years will be spent amidst financial emergencies. This is obviously not a policy that can be so specific as to address this situation, but it does apply to Greece and to Ireland.
It is clear that Greece is one of the countries where more flexibility could help to boost the business investment climate, as is the case with Spain. Ireland is a country which could rebalance competitiveness factors and have a greater focus on investing in skills and education, as opposed to other sources of competitiveness that have been extensively used recently.
We must, of course, pay attention to the very critical situation we are in at this moment, and maybe next year there will be little chance of increasing the level of employment. But we also have to look at the overall picture, which will start to improve from the first half of next year, because the major economies driving the recovery forward are already experiencing job growth. We believe that, despite the disturbances in the financial sector, this process will continue and the European policies which we have put forward, although not being able to micromanage job creation in the Member States, will create the right framework and provide guidance for the Member States to continue working towards full employment.
I would like to address some of the points that have been discussed or perhaps even challenged in the discussion, because some of them need further explanation.
First of all, we maintain the concept of flexicurity, but this does not mean that we want to put the emphasis only on flexibility, in which case we would use this concept the way it was used before.
I would like to give you some examples where there is clearly a reflection of the current times and a reflection of the new challenges.
We are definitely making this initiative more age-conscious, and when we speak about lifelong learning, we want to put a greater emphasis on the lifelong learning opportunities of older workers, because we have to assume that active working life is becoming longer and people will have to be assisted more with career changes or career developments.
We have to have a better focus on young people, which is clearly a key consideration for Europe 2020. But a separate flagship initiative – ‘Youth on the move’ – already exists, where most of the initiatives and strategies in connection with the young generation are outlined in very concrete terms.
Youth is the age group where we do not want to push for a greater level of flexibility, because there is already enough. There is more flexibility for young workers in Europe than in the United States. We want to facilitate more mobility, because we believe that the young generation is the one that can better take advantage of the integrated European labour market and develop their own skills and improve their competitiveness through taking advantage not only of the market itself but also of the institutions that the European Union provides.
What I spoke about was better working conditions and quality jobs. I regret that Ms Schroedter did not understand it perfectly. We want to address segmentation as a major challenge of the current European labour market, and we put forward a very concrete example: the open-ended contract, which can help. It is not about removing people from permanent contracts, it is helping those who, so far, only had a chance to have a short-term or fixed-term contract, to have an open-ended one and build up their rights. This will help, to some extent, to provide more jobs, but it will definitely help to provide more rights. This is also very important if we want to speak about quality jobs.
When we speak about investing in human capital, we should not forget that the European Social Fund is there to support all these initiatives in all Member States, and we hope that it will remain a robust instrument of the EU in supporting all these initiatives on employment and social inclusion."@en1
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