A4-0417/98

Resolution on the Commission Communication - Proposal for Guidelines for Member States Employment Policies 1999 (COM(98)0574 - C4-0587/98)

The European Parliament,

- having regard to the Commission communication (COM(98)0574 - C4-0587/98),

- having regard to the Commission Employment Rates Report 1998 'Employment Performance in the Member States¨ (COM(98)0572 - C4-0588/98),

- having regard to the Council resolution of 15 December 1997 on the Employment Policy Guidelines for 1998 ((OJ C 30, 28.1.1998, p. 1.)),

- having regard to the Commission Communication 'From Guidelines into Action - the National Action Plans For Employment¨ (COM(98)0316),

- having regard to the conclusions of the Cardiff European Council of 15 and 16 June 1998,

- having regard to its resolution of 21 October 1997 embodying Parliament's proposal to the extraordinary European Council meeting on Employment (20-21 November 1997) ((OJ C 339, 10.11.1997, p. 30 )),

- having regard to its resolution of 19 November 1997 on the Commission Report 'Employment in Europe - 1997" ((OJ C 371, 8.12.1997, p. 85 )),

- having regard to the report of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the opinions of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy and the Committee on Women's Rights (A4-0417/98),

A. whereas economic growth in the European Union has recovered in 1997 and prospects for further economic recovery are apparently confirmed; whereas employment recovery, however, is still very slight, since economic growth is not up to the level of progress in productivity and could be slowed down, at least in several sectors, by the economic crisis in Asia, Russia and Latin America;

B. whereas a rapid and complete implementation of the employment guidelines is necessary in order to improve the European Union¨s employment performance; whereas the new guidelines should focus on 'prevention¨ and 'participation¨ as key concepts of employment policy; whereas attaining the highest employment levels is a decisive step towards the social convergence which the Member States have to achieve,

C. whereas the potential for deepening the Single Market must be grasped by continuing structural reforms of product markets and labour markets in order to improve the competitivity of industry and commerce within the European Union, supported by investment in education, vocational training and research and development, and the development of a strong SME sector contributing to employment growth,

Financial and Economic Aspects

1. Calls for an interinstitutional agreement between Council, Commission and the European Parliament to coordinate economic and employment policies and calls on the European Council to set up a framework for dialogue between the institutions responsible for economic policy and the European social partners in order to achieve improved coordination between economic policy and employment and wage-policies;

2. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop feasible alternatives to taxation on labour, as they have already been suggested in the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment and in the Monti working party on taxation, to explore possible strategies to avoid revenue loss through electronic commerce, and to look once more into the possibilities and implications of VAT reduction for, in particular, labour-intensive services, on the understanding that changes to labour contribution or taxation systems must not jeopardise the financial stability of State social security schemes;

3. Is concerned that cooperation among the Member States on economic policies has, in general, been slow to take explicit measures in the legal and taxation areas to strengthen the second employment pillar of stimulating entrepreneurship, and draws attention to recent initiatives by the Commission in this area, eg on the provision of risk capital to stimulate the growth of small and medium-sized companies.

4. Calls on the Member States to complete the single market and to avoid unfair tax competition, for example by removing tax incentives for the relocation of investment;

5. Urges the Council to use the opportunities provided by the Employment Guidelines to adopt economic policies, in line with the desire expressed at the October 1998 meeting of heads of state and government in Pörtschach, and which interprets the 1998 Broad Economic Guidelines in a manner which stimulates investment-led growth, promotes consumer confidence and the maintenance of domestic consumer demand in response to the severe world economic and trade downturn; considers that further clarification of the implementation of the Stability Pact would be helpful for this purpose;

6. Calls on the Member States to develop a European 'Pact for Employment, Sustainability and solidarity¨ and calls on the Council and the Commission to extend the European investment strategy to achieve and sustain stronger growth, competitiveness and employment levels in the European Union for the medium and long run; calls, in this respect, on the Commission to undertake shortly a feasibility study of the various financing mechanisms to underpin such a strategy, and to examine whether, if monetary stability is maintained, national reserves could be used to promote investment activity;

7. Calls on the social partners to establish structures for wage formation that make it possible to achieve real wage increases combined with high levels of employment and monetary stability, whereby investment-oriented wage components should be used to a greater extent;

8. Calls on the Commission to evaluate the progress of the newly created possibilities of the European Investment bank in favour of SMEs and calls on the Member States to improve the basic conditions and promotion of SMEs, in order to increase both their numbers and their job-creation potential;

Prevention

9. Calls for an early identification of employability problems and appropriate strategies to reduce the rise in unemployment, the aim being to match the performance of the three best Member States and halve current long-term unemployment levels;

10. Calls on the Member States, in cooperation with the social partners, to double the percentage of the labour force receiving training with special attention to older workers (50-64 years) responding thus to actual training needs, including those resulting from technological change;

11. Calls for a targeted use of structural funds aimed at preserving and enhancing the level of qualifications and skills in the labour force and underlines the need to improve education systems which are the main providers of knowledge, both general and technical, essential for a culture of lifelong learning;

12. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to exploit the full potential of the social economy as an important area for the creation of jobs in order to benefit the community and help to reconcile family life and working life, and to improve the qualitative aspects of new jobs, giving priority to social protection, the recognition of the professional status of such jobs and entrepreneurial spirit;

Participation

13. Calls on the Council to adopt, as a complement to the fourth pillar, a policy of 'gender mainstreaming¨ throughout the guidelines; a similar mainstreaming approach should be implemented with regard to policy measures concerning disabled people; urges a clear commitment to be made to halving the gender gap within five years;

14. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to facilitate access by migrants and ethnic minorities into the labour market and to pay special attention to these groups in all employment pillars;

15. Calls on the Member States to increase the number of child care places and facilities for the care of the elderly and invalids by 20 per cent a year in countries which have still to reach the levels of the three best performing countries; furthermore, single parents - 80% of whom are women - should be given support in the form of guaranteed child care (e.g. day care centres, nursery schools and crèches), to facilitate access to secure jobs and career planning;

16. Calls on the Member States to move towards the individualisation of taxation and social security rights as a measure to facilitate women's access to the labour market and ensure transparency in the management of the systems;

17. Calls on the Member States to take measures to give women access to jobs with a promising future, particularly in the highly-qualified sector, so as to prevent women from being employed predominantly in menial jobs;

18. Calls once more on the social partners to negotiate agreements on a more flexible system governing working hours to meet both the needs of workers and the requirements of production; urges the Member States to support this process with adequate measures where necessary;

19. Calls upon the Council to make proposals to reduce maximum weekly working hours, especially by extending the scope of the working time directive to the excluded sectors and by lowering the present forty-eight hour limit;

Implementation

20. Calls on the Member States to bring about a better balance among the four pillars of the employment guidelines by strengthening measures under the 'adaptability¨ and 'equal opportunities¨ pillars;

21. Calls on the Commission to further develop concrete targets, based on benchmarks and to set medium-term aims for improving the ratio of workers to non-workers in the EU as a whole, under the guidelines, and calls on the Member States to adopt national targets, based on common benchmarks, in the framework of the National Action Plans;

22. Points to the need to pay attention to the quality of jobs, as far as security and stability are concerned, and ensure that people working part time or in other 'atypical' jobs have the same rights as full-time workers;

23. Calls on the Commission and the Member States not only to develop 'entrepreneurship¨ in the sense of increasing the percentage of self-employed among the global working population, but also to develop the idea of creating and fostering a broadly based social spirit of initiative and responsibility within and without the traditional centralised enterprise;

24. Calls on the Member States to set up adequate monitoring and evaluation structures, which would involve the social partners and those responsible for equal opportunities policy, in order to provide reliable information on the progress achieved, to assess the impact and quality of the measures taken and to recommend necessary adaptations;

25. Calls on the Member States to quantify the funding for the National Action Plans as accurately as possible, in order to make it possible to assess whether the planned resources are sufficient to meet the employment policy targets;

26. Calls on the social partners to help to combat the high rate of unemployment caused by structural changes by means of enabling clauses in collective agreements, new forms of remuneration and the reorganisation of working time (the development of flexitime) and more flexible conditions for transition to retirement;

27. Calls on the Union and the Member States, before the end of 1999, to equip themselves with and develop common tools and indicators to make their statistical systems more comparable, thus enabling compliance with the employment guidelines to be assessed on a uniform basis and covered by the proper monitoring;

28. Calls on the Commission to include in the annual employment report an evaluation of the way in which a high level of employment is taken into consideration in the formulation and implementation of Community policies and activities;

29. Asks the Commission to agree with the European Parliament a timetable for the presentation of its proposal on the draft employment guidelines, allowing a proper consultation pursuant to Article 128(2) of the Treaty of Amsterdam (consolidated version);

30. Calls on the Commission to submit a report on the employment implications of economic and monetary union and the single currency, both for the countries inside the euro zone and for those outside it;

31. Calls on the Council to involve the Social Affairs Council and the Employment and Labour Market Committee in the preparation of the Broad Economic guidelines;

32. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the European social partners and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.