Madam Commissioner, the EU’s employment policy is one of open cooperation in which the Member States set common goals, exchange experiences and evaluate each other’s results and employment policies. It is an open process in which the individual country itself chooses which funds it will use in order to achieve the common goals. We, in Parliament, should also like to see the process become more open by involving and engaging the general public more. The report we are debating today is about the implementation of Article 129 of the Treaty of Amsterdam concerning employment policy incentives. It is about appropriations to the work on employment policy over the next five years and about money for analyses, statistics, conferences and reports etc. Employment policy is to be evaluated in 2003. It will be the first open coordination to be evaluated, and the money for employment policy is also to be used for this evaluation. At Parliament’s first reading, we adopted 17 amendments to the Commission’s proposal, covering the following themes. We should like to see the social partners and local and regional authorities more involved in the process, and we should like to see greater focus placed upon the ways in which information and employment policy affects a broader public. We should like to see more focus on the equal treatment of women in employment policy; we should like to receive some further proposals concerning Parliament’s involvement; and we should like to look at the connection with other Community activities. Last but not least, we should like to see pilot projects to increase information about employment policy at local and regional levels and help develop relevant strategies. As a result, Parliament proposed an increase in the budget. The Council thereupon accepted a number of Parliament’s amendments, including those aimed at involving the local and regional levels and at involving the social partners more. Some of the proposals concerning greater focus on equality have also been accepted, but the Council did not want to accept some very central proposals from Parliament. Against that background, there was a great deal of support in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for Parliament’s re-tabling those proposals from the first reading that the Council did not accept. A majority of Parliament has campaigned for a long time for local and regional efforts to be incorporated into employment policy, and we have pointed out that the exchange of experiences and methods with those operating at local level and working in a voluntary capacity could be financed via Article 129. That is because it is clearly characteristic of unemployment in the EU to be focused in regions and local areas and in pockets of poverty where there are islands of unemployment. Local efforts are central when it comes to getting people into work. That is why it makes good sense to talk about local action plans and about the exchange of experiences and information from this work. I am quite convinced that greater focus on local efforts will make all of us much wiser about the new avenues that might be explored in employment policy. We have supported local employment initiatives by means of preparatory action, for which there has been a budget line called B5-503, and it is Parliament’s desire that this initiative should be followed up and continued via pilot projects under Article 129. Perhaps the expression ‘projects’ is misleading, for we want, of course, to see a development of the methodical work carried out, that is to say analyses and studies and the development of statistics and methods. We do not wish, under Article 129, to finance projects with the project-oriented and experimental character of projects financed under Article 6 of the Social Fund. There is therefore no question of our wanting to duplicate things that are already happening under the aegis of the Social Fund. On the contrary. There are many of us who are happy about the open coordination method of employment policy, for it enables the Member States to improve their results in employment policy, learn from each other’s experiences and actually compete to obtain better results. There will not, however, be very much of that healthy competition as long as employment policy and the ‘Luxembourg process’ are as unfamiliar to people as they are at present. In many countries’ national parliaments, there is no debate on national employment plans. Nor are there any other activities that might make the process and the results better known and create more grassroots support. Is political coordination based on analyses and statistics debated by the same politicians, officials and experts at conferences around the EU really binding enough? No, let us obtain a much greater awareness of results and objectives, so that governments encounter much greater commitment and a desire for everyone to achieve the results obtained in those countries which have most success in employment policy.

Political group: ELDR