Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-04-Speech-3-134"
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"en.20021204.8.3-134"2
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".
Madam President, economic prospects are not at their best at the moment and the European Union has realised that it needs to coordinate economic policy and employment policy more efficiently.
The Commission proposal on streamlining coordination cycles has attracted the interest of all the institutions and numerous discussions have been held at various levels, illustrating that this proposal is not merely a technical proposal, as it might appear at first sight; it is, of course, guided by important political objectives, such as efficiency and transparency in the application of the Lisbon agenda and the role of the European Employment Strategy which, after five years in practice, is now firmly established. May I make a point of thanking the rapporteur, Mr Karas, and the draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, Mr Bullmann, on a job extremely well done. I shall confine my comments to a few basic issues.
First, the report supports the focus on the medium term. This means that we need to be much more sparing when changing and revising the guidelines. The Commission will approve a package of guidelines in keeping with the new programme for the first time in April 2003, covering the three years up to 2006. We need to avoid any major changes in the guidelines before this mid-term review in 2006. We have proven that it is far better to keep to the guidelines and ensure they are applied than to constantly add new elements.
Secondly, this medium-term focus will require greater discipline on the part of everyone involved: the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament and all other interested parties. Of course, the Commission will review the employment recommendations for each individual country every year in order to ensure that they still reflect political developments in each Member State. May I remind you that the Treaty requires us to produce this annual report, which will take the form of application monitoring. That brings me to the second aspect, which is consistency and complementarity. It is vital that the two procedures complement each other if we are to achieve the maximum possible coordination between economic policy and employment policy. We had a fair degree of overlap in the past; on occasions, however, we also had contradictory approaches to the two strategies.
Thirdly, there is a need to focus on application. Now that the employment strategy has been up and running for a number of years, we have identified the basic practical problems and the gap which often arises between submitting national action plans on employment and implementing them. I should like to stress in particular that this streamlining procedure should result in closer collaboration, not just between the various Councils – the Ecofin Council and the Council on Employment will need to find a clearer and more efficient way of working together – but also between the institutions of the European Union. I think that Parliament – and the entire procedure, of course – will benefit from this proposed streamlining of procedures, especially from more transparent information, with the main elements of the application of financial policies and employment policies being provided in a coordinated manner. May I remind you that, in the past, information on these two procedures often came in at different times, giving rise to a great deal of confusion.
Fourthly, streamlining means a better governance model for these procedures, which in turn means more efficient consultation with the European Parliament and greater involvement on the part of the social partners and civil society. The big issue as far as evaluating employment policies is concerned is that neither the social partners nor the national parliaments have been properly involved.
Finally, I must say that this proposal respects the need for autonomous procedures, as required under the Treaty. In short, the economic guidelines provide an overall framework for economic policy but the employment strategy has the necessary degree of autonomy. I am delighted that Parliament supports this approach.
So what next? This entire procedure coincides with the review of the employment strategy. We shall be presenting an initial communication in January 2003 and both these documents, the communication on the revision of the employment strategy and the draft joint report, which we submitted a month ago, will be the two basic political papers and will need to be debated so that we can get to the spring Council and then start applying the new procedure with the guidelines. We have a long history of collaboration with the European Parliament on the employment strategy. I think that we now have an opportunity for even more efficient and substantial collaboration."@en1
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