Mr President, I should like to begin by thanking the shadow rapporteurs from the other parties for cooperating so well on this report. I think it is to be welcomed that we can muster a broad majority for a proposal that extends Parliament’s earlier decisions. By means of this proposal, we are establishing the framework for the EU’s employment policy over the next five years. Employment policy is based, of course, upon what we call open coordination which, most recently at the Lisbon Summit, has been highlighted as a method that may be used within many other areas of policy. Open coordination means that countries may use different methods of achieving common goals. And the common goal in this case is higher employment. What we have here are recommended guidelines for the policies of the Member States. Countries must report on what they are doing to make the unemployed better able to meet the demands of the labour market. Encouragement must be given to the spirit of enterprise and to flexibility in the labour market, and countries must work to promote a better relationship between work and family life. This reporting, carried out by the Member States every year, therefore forms the point of departure for the Commission’s annual report on employment in the EU which, together with the Commission’s analyses and statistics concerning development, forms the basis for the Council’s recommendation to the individual countries. The process is open. There is a free choice of policy, and if a country goes down a markedly different path than the one recommended, it can be criticised, but nothing more. Is the process too informal, then? A whole lot of reports, meetings and conferences and a whole lot of words, but no certainty that the objectives will be achieved. On the surface of it, the process is indeed perhaps not formal enough. However, this policy whereby countries measure their efforts against each other and exchange experiences – benchmarking and employment of best practices, to use the modern terminology – means that a broader public gets to see which countries are doing well and which less well. To a large extent, open coordination works by becoming a subject in the public and national debate about employment policy. In those countries where youth unemployment is high, the public is bound to ask how it can be that their politicians are not achieving the same good results as politicians in other countries. Is there anything we can learn from the efforts of other countries? Transparency, understood as openness to the public, is in actual fact a very important agent in this process. We therefore want to see more focus upon providing information to the public at large and upon involving the parties in the labour market, together with local and regional authorities, to a much greater extent than is contemplated in the Commission’s proposal. Article 129 provides, of course, for the possibility of introducing pilot projects. We want an exchange of information about the ways and means of involvement at local level. This could be a pilot project. There is no question of our having new projects which mimic practices with which the Social Fund has familiarised us. It is about developing analyses, knowledge and information about the whys and wherefores of local and regional involvement in employment policy. By means of its communication concerning the role of local and regional authorities, the Commission has already made a start upon work of this kind. In this year’s Budget, Parliament too has introduced a new budget line for preparative initiatives to promote local participation in employment policy. We have done this precisely to promote a broader knowledge of European employment strategy. By including in this proposal the role of local and regional authorities in employment policy, we ensure that there is a legal basis for this initiative. When, in this way, we ask the Commission to do more work than is contemplated in the Commission’s own proposal, then appropriations must of course follow, and my report therefore proposes an increase in appropriations to EUR 65 million in contrast to the Commission’s proposal of EUR 55 million. To put it briefly, the open coordination method must be open in two senses. It must be open in the sense that countries retain the freedom to organise their own policies and that there must be a number of ways to achieve the same objectives. However, it must also be open in the sense that the general public is involved far more than it is at present. The policy on employment, or Luxembourg process, is to be commended, but why does it have to be a matter of such secrecy?

Political group: ELDR