The Commission and the Council will be making a joint report to the Stockholm summit in March on the best way to make progress on these issues. Secondly, the Commission is also active on the social front. The Lisbon Council asked for a study of social protection from a long term point of view, paying particular attention to pensions and the Commission issued last October a Communication on safe and sustainable pensions . This marries well with work on the economic front. One particular feature I should like to highlight is the need to change policies that currently seem to discourage older workers from participating in the labour market.
Pension systems tend to offer strong incentives for early withdrawal from the labour market.
In addition, older workers' job skills are often outdated. Policies must be found to reverse this trend. We need these older workers to be economically active, not dependant on a shrinking number of younger workers. The Commission shall be reporting again on this topic to the G teberg European Council next June. Let me now turn to the two initiatives for which I am more directly responsible - funded pensions and taxation.