Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, employment policy in the EU was successful last year even though not all our ambitious objectives have been achieved. But the points have been set. In few other fields do we have to think in the long term as much as in employment policy. My impression is that the Member States have not only grasped that, but that they are also acting accordingly. My report takes the same line as that of the Committee, which has kept to it over the past few years. We have always followed employment processes in the Member States and offered constructive criticism. I have therefore concentrated this year on some new key points. The first of these is the new theme of work quality, on which we in Parliament agree with the initiative of the Commission and the Belgian Presidency, which have also made the quality of work a pre-eminent item on the agenda. We are very keen that this topic should find its way into all policy areas by a kind of mainstreaming. The second key point is gender equality in the employment market. Here, too, according to the Commission's figures, we have achieved an improvement. The proportion of women in employment has increased by 2% in any case, which is of course not enough for us, but it is the right way to go, and also shows the change in the Member States' thinking. This reorientation also means – and even that was not so simple – that a change of consciousness has taken place, at least in some Member States such as Germany, Greece and Ireland. A third point is very important to me – the integration and incorporation of disadvantaged groups into the employment market. This has for some years been an important topic for this Parliament. In my report, I put forward the argument that employment policy measures should include immigrants as well. I believe this to be an important area for the future, precisely because we will otherwise be creating new social flashpoints. I would like finally to mention the area of continuing education. We had debates in Committee as to whether it made sense to demand a right to continuing education and to direct the national governments to translate it into action. I believe that, now, of all times, when we are already finding that bottlenecks in certain trades result from too little training and development in the past, such a national right to continuing education would represent the dictates of the hour. I am, moreover, convinced that we will have achieved it within four or five years. Why, then, should Parliament not be the trailblazer for once? National and European targets need to be set if these policy objectives are to be achieved. There is, I believe, an additional need for more intensive cooperation between enterprises and institutions of higher education than hitherto, in order to facilitate more effective knowledge transfer and more speedily initiate entrepreneurial innovation than has previously been the case. I appeal also to the Member States, to the Council and to the Belgian Presidency to have the courage to initiate a public debate on employment policy in Europe. The fact is that we have observed that there is in the national parliaments – with the possible exception of Denmark – and in the regional parliaments and assemblies, still, little or no, discussion of European employment policy. Even employers' organisations and trade unions, at regional level, do not know of the significance of our debates and resolutions in the European Parliament. Of course, effective employment policies and coordinated and farsighted economic and financial policies belong together. I cannot draw a veil over this Parliament's present dissatisfaction with the Council's objectives in this area and with its debates on the subject. I cannot help thinking that we could do with a bit more courage on the part of the finance ministers on the Ecofin Council, in order to guarantee here, too, the appropriate and proportionate goal for a rational European employment policy, for only then can an offensive for growth and employment in Europe be realised. (Applause)

Political group: PSE