It has ensured that social and economic policies work in practice, both in the workplace and across wider society. All of this has an important part to play in the European Employment strategy, where economic and social issues are integrated in a very productive way. The four pillars of the Employment Strategy, employability, adaptability, entrepreneurship and equal opportunities form a tangible expression of social policy, well designed, as a productive factor. Under the adaptability pillar, new, exciting, and essential demands are being placed on the shoulders of the social partners, at national and sectoral levels, but also at European level. The economic success of the Union is, more and more, dependent on the success of social partnership.
Adaptability is about new partnerships for new economic, social and technological conditions.
This demands new approaches to skills, work organisation, collective arrangements and integration of unemployed people. It also demands a more dynamic relationship between the Social Partners, and it requires Member States to enable that dynamic to develop. These challenges are common to the whole Union. That is why the Member States have identified the social partners as key agents of the modernisation process in the European Employment strategy. That is why, in the Commission's Guidelines for 1999, the invitation to involve the social partners at European level has been strengthened.