Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, mobility is an important factor in creating better jobs and in closing the skills gap in the European labour market. A gap clearly exists, however, in occupational and geographical mobility in the Union. With regard to the first of these, European citizens do not change jobs very frequently, although most Member States have experienced an upward trend since 1995. With regard to the movement of workers between Member States and nationally, the picture is no more encouraging: our rate of mobility is almost half of that of US citizens, with only a small elite of 225 000 European citizens moving to another Union country; in other words, 0.1% of the population of the Fifteen. This is why, in February 2002, the Commission produced an action plan for skills and mobility that identifies 25 measures intended to respond to the shortcomings and needs indicated by the high-level task force. I feel bound to criticise the Commission for having presented its proposals directly to the Barcelona European Council before giving Parliament the opportunity to comment on them. Whilst the coherence of the action plan’s recommendations should be highlighted, European citizens still face many obstacles. In this report, which I had the honour of drafting, in accordance with the Hughes procedure, in cooperation with the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport and incorporating the opinions of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities and the Committee of the Regions, which proved to be important and valuable contributions – I would highlight various measures intended to promote occupational and geographical mobility and the elimination of obstacles to their full realisation, some of which I shall now discuss. - Firstly, local authorities should be involved in setting up a network of industry-based and educational advisory bodies to bring the world of work and education systems closer together; other, more effective actions need to be taken in order to reduce regional imbalances given that the basic reason for regional inequalities in terms of employment growth is the differences in the skill and educational levels and the mobility and adaptability of the labour force; - Secondly, Member States should provide support for one of the pillars of the European Employment Strategy – the entrepreneurial spirit – using the necessary funds, and coordinate their training-related activities more closely; - Thirdly, we must highlight the important role of the social partners in promoting access to training so that workers can achieve more and better qualifications and skills; the participation of the social partners is also crucial to monitoring the action plan at European, national and regional level; - Fourthly, Community legislation on the mutual recognition of qualifications must be more strictly applied; - Fifthly, youth exchange programmes, the awareness of cultural diversity, linguistic ability and citizenship must all be encouraged throughout training; - Sixthly, in order to combat the under-representation of women in high-technology sectors, support must be provided for the adoption of training actions and for the introduction of information and communications technologies and new systems of learning that guarantee women priority access, not forgetting the training and retraining of older workers, the disabled and other disadvantaged groups; - Seventhly, the crucial role that teleworking could play as a response to a geographical mobility that workers do not want; - Eighthly, the transferability of pensions is one of the most sensitive issues in this area, because pensions constitute a major obstacle to mobility, and workers who have acquired rights to a pension in their Member State could risk being unable to transfer these rights. Directive 98/49/EC and Regulation 1408/71 must, therefore, be updated, simplified and extended and the coexistence of situations of double taxation with those in which this does not apply must finally be eliminated; a further major contribution to fostering geographical mobility is the creation of the European health insurance card, which is expected to be up and running in 2004; - Ninthly, we must highlight the use of the Eures system, although this must be extended and brought up to date. I shall now address the Commission, so that it takes account of the importance of this instrument and fulfils the good intentions expressed in its communication on this particular aspect; the objective of transparency and of centralising information on employment opportunities within the Union can be achieved through the creation of a one-stop site providing information on mobility as well as campaigns aimed at individual industries. I would also highlight the fact that the candidate countries must combat the brain drain in this area; we must help them to create their own structures for innovation and to promote the exchange of experience. Member States, local authorities, employers, social partners and Community institutions must actively seek to ensure the success of this action plan and the measures that have now been presented must be taken into account in the revision of the European Employment Strategy (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE