A4-0231/96

Resolution on the Commission communication on a European strategy for encouraging local development and employment initiatives (COM(95)0273 - C4- 0289/95)

The European Parliament,

- having regard to the Commission communication on a European strategy for encouraging local development and employment initiatives (COM(95)0273 - C4-0289/95),

- having regard to the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment of December 1993 (COM(93)0700),

- having regard to the conclusions of the European Councils in Essen (December 1994) and Madrid (December 1995),

- having regard to the report of the Committee on Social Affairs and Employment and the opinions of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy, the Committee on Regional Policy, the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media and the Committee on Women's Rights (A4-0231/96),

A. whereas local employment initiatives are appropriate means of helping to create jobs; whereas there is an increasing number of such initiatives in Member States since they reflect the current desire for better living and working conditions,

B. whereas jobs could be created under local employment initiatives which are SMEs and VSEs

C. whereas, because of the low cost price per job created, encouraging local employment initiatives aimed at satisfying new local needs can make a substantial contribution to the active labour market, as recommended in the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment,

D. whereas identifying and developing areas of employment at local level is the task principally of direct operators; whereas this requires new forms of cooperation between firms, local authorities and employment exchanges etc.,

E. whereas four major areas are identified as having potential for the creation of new jobs: services in everyday life, leisure and cultural services, services in the environmental sector and services in the housing sector,

F. whereas many of the new needs for assistance and personal services cannot be adequately met by public or private undertakings alone,

G. whereas it is essential to create favourable conditions locally for employment initiatives, aided by decentralization and a change in attitude on the part of public officials, in order to create a partnership between the public and the private sectors,

H. whereas many of these local initiatives have taken on new forms of business organization (social cooperatives, social undertakings, etc.),

I. whereas, in addition to the potential afforded by a more focused use of structural funding, appropriate financial instruments for local developments must also be used with the cooperation of regional authorities,

J. whereas a more appropriate vocational framework must be created to make better use of skills and to publicise the new professions; whereas it is particularly important to ensure that women are integrated in programmes to promote local employment initiatives,

K. whereas the legal and administrative framework must be simplified and modernized to take account of the new situations produced by the local initiatives,

L. whereas it is essential, in the context of local employment initiatives, to devise administrative and financial incentives specifically and clearly adapted to the fields to be created, for example

- that of classic enterprises catering, under market conditions, for the needs of solvent recipients, but the establishment and development of which are hindered by local handicaps such as lack of capital, on-the- spot mobilization or inadequate local transport facilities, roads or networks. In some cases a single initial boost is necessary but may be enough;

- that of 'intermediary' enterprises which aim to accustom those in a situation of marginalization to normal working conditions in order to meet new but potentially solvent demands, such as repairs, the upkeep and maintenance of buildings, the collection and treatment of waste, etc; in this case functional support is needed for several years but may be gradually phased out and be limited to a period established beforehand;

- that of initiatives aimed at providing a service which is socially necessary but apparently not profitable in the present state of the economy, such as support for dependent people, domestic help in the home, the conservation of the local environment etc. This sector may create a large number of jobs but requires permanent forms of aid of a limited duration,

1. Welcomes the Commission communication on developing local employment initiatives and calls on the Commission to use this approach as a strategic framework for further developing independent local economic patterns defined in accordance with the principle of 'local work for local people using local resources';

2. Shares the Commission's view that there are certain needs which cannot yet be satisfied, that the market mechanism alone cannot provide a solution, that in the seventeen areas which could be extended to include other appropriate areas there is nevertheless considerable growth potential for employment, and that local development and employment initiatives should, by their very nature, be aimed specifically at less skilled workers and targeted at disadvantaged local or sub-regional areas;

3. Welcomes the communication's underlying approach which could encourage involvement on the part of the European Union, in particular by coordinating dissemination and information policies in respect of experience and know-how already acquired and procedures for implementing the Structural Fund regulations at local level;

4. Calls on the Commission, in addition to promoting the establishment of trans-European information and cooperation networks and the exchange of experience between the Member States, to disseminate more effectively the outcome and experience of work already undertaken, to play a leading role as a catalyst and motor in stimulating new employment initiatives, e.g. through closer integration of structural policy and support for local activities and to draw up specific programmes for the development and dissemination of these new forms of social entrepreneurship;

5. Suggests that the Commission should step up legal, administrative, fiscal and financial research with the aim of defining - both for its own use in the programmes which it carries out and in order to encourage the development of these policies by the Member States - the financial instruments, legal statutes and administrative procedures designed to tackle the various situations which may arise, such as:

- facilitating the combination of several activities, either simultaneously or by means of seasonal alternation,

- support, either by starting capital or by support for the necessary infrastructure work, for the creation of enterprises with a local market likely to be profitable, provided that they overcome the handicaps linked to their location,

- long-term operational support for intermediary enterprises, i.e. using a labour force which is marginalized, in order to engage in production under market conditions,

- an on-going contribution to achieving solvency for socially useful demands, such as local services or the conservation of the environment, which would not be profitable in the present state of market organization;

6. Calls on the Member States to develop new strategic approaches to support for local activities in the context of the four-year programme for the utilization of money from the Structural Funds and to increase the part for local initiatives;

7. Calls on the Commission to shape its new employment policy in such a way that the basis for local employment initiatives - partnership, participation and independent planning - is duly recognized, strengthened and developed; innovative concepts such as employment agreements between the various partners at local level should be supported;

8. Calls on the Commission not to pursue its activities aimed at encouraging local employment initiatives, in the context of the new employment policy called for by the Essen European Council, in isolation from its other activities in European policy, but rather to make support strategies part of more wide-ranging economic, social and regional development strategies to avoid social fragmentation; measures which have a direct effect on local employment structures should be assessed, before they are implemented, in respect of the quality of their impact on the priority issue of employment and the different EU programmes on the effectiveness of local employment should be coordinated in a coherent way;

9. Calls on the Commission to develop its action to promote local employment initiatives in the context of a new sustainable development model, drawn up in Chapter 10 of the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness, Employment;

10. Consequently calls on the Council to decide on the proposal for a CO2 energy tax at Community level which could substantially contribute to the development of sustainable local employment;

11. Urges the Commission also to present to the ECOFIN Council an amendment to the statutes of the European Investment Fund, to enable the funding of partnerships in urban regeneration as already called for at the Copenhagen European Council;

12. Calls on the Commission to canvas, in the existing programmes, for direct investment in employment at local level as a form of pump-priming; indirect structural measures with an impact on employment such as infrastructure should be tailored to these investments; the flexibility of the resources used should be improved in this light;

13. Calls on the Commission, in its promotion of durable employment based on local decision-making and participation structures, to focus on the following:

(a) promotion of forms of undertakings that are geared to the local authorities and of cooperatives, including the non-profit-making economic sector,

(b) development of specific local financing instruments to increase the value of local savings and capital,

(c) social and ecological adaptation of products and services (social marketing), in order to encourage ultra-small firms which are important for the labour market structure by means of new agreements between producers and consumers,

(d) public development workshops for product development and innovation (goods and services),

(e) tailor-made advice and qualification measures to promote individual initiative and self-organization,

(f) setting up of decentralised establishments for training and promotion of citizens' and workforce initiatives; neighbourhood, local authority and self-help associations of disadvantaged groups for economic self- help and regional renewal;

14. Calls on the Member States to ensure that the new jobs created under the local employment initiatives involve reasonable pay and conditions of employment and social security rights;

15. Takes the view that local development centres as institutions bringing together different bodies to generate a local culture of joint planning, to develop socially useful and environmentally compatible products and to implement local labour market and structural policies are often of key importance; supports in this context analysis of the local economic and social structures, above all with a view to identifying the specific social, material, cultural and historical and scenic potential, i.e. resources for independent development; calls therefore on the Commission to support the setting up of such development centres, to encourage their development and to publicise their activities;

16. Calls on the Commission to develop four action fields for a policy of supporting local initiatives, in particular by creating a positive framework for local employment initiatives, introducing a series of financial instruments for local development, supporting, in cooperation with regional authorities, training courses for the new professions and, finally, by updating and modifying the legal and administrative framework, by supporting the creation of specific financial instruments for social enterprises (investment financing, rotating funds and credit facilities;

17. Calls on the Commission to organize, in conjunction with responsible bodies at various levels, a greater involvement of the various operators at local level, e.g. communal development workshops and comparable planning procedures which will act as an incentive to the persons involved, and lead to the creation of partnerships between them, in particular between employed persons and the unemployed, local firms and administrations; systematic use must be made of 'coordinators and consultants' to analyse local supply and demand and then forge contacts between project managers, local actors and potential customers: one possibility might be technical support under the KAROLUS programme and a new programme aimed at training civil servants (at national, regional and local level), whereby both programmes should work together in an integrated way and serve to promote local development and employment initiatives;

18. Calls on the Commission to establish transnational development pilot projects;

19. Calls on the Commission, on the basis of the Council recommendation of 31 March 1992 on child care ((OJ L 123, 8.5.1992, p. 16.)), to exploit all the existing potential so that the Structural Funds can make a greater financial contribution towards creating service institutions at local level, for example to create facilities for children, the elderly and persons reliant on care;

20. Welcomes the new Article 10 of the Regulation on the European Fund for Regional Development which provides for support for innovative interregional action in the cultural domain, and calls on the Commission to keep it informed of progress reached with the revised initiative pursuant to Article 10, while carefully ensuring effective and appropriate methods for disseminating the results;

21. Takes the view that a continuously updated and decentralized distribution of information about European support for local development and employment initiatives is needed so that

- local operators can make integrative use of funds for projects concerned with different objectives; and

- small groups, too, can participate in the tendering by the due date;

22. Calls on the Commission to improve and use existing European networks for societies, local authorities and popular initiatives for local development, social enterprises, civic initiatives for local development, the economy, social inclusion and employment initiatives, and to involve them more closely as partners in drawing up and evaluating local employment initiatives;

23. Welcomes and supports the intention of the Irish Presidency to emphasize the contribution of the local development strategies in tackling Europe's unemployment problems;

24. Calls on the Commission to give active support to the establishment of networks of towns and cities or regions for the exchange of information and for the setting up of new telematic services;

25. Calls on the Commission to deploy the Structural Funds and the Community initiatives in such a way as to permit the co-financing of the infrastructures and other investments favouring the preservation of establishment of local businesses;

26. Welcomes the fact that the strategy document does justice to the decisive contribution made by local and regional authorities to economic development, and calls therefore on the Commission to continue to support projects such as Directoria and the PACTE programme which permit networking in the cultural sector;

27. Welcomes the recognition of the cultural sector's economical and social importance and its job-creation potential and points to the vitality of the cultural sector and its far-reaching social and economic impact: not only the creation of jobs but also additional benefits to the local community, e.g. improving the quality of life and enhancing people's self-respect, together with incentives to invest more in the area in question;

28. Calls on the Commission to give consideration, in the area of protection of the environment, to the development of cooperation between local authorities in neighbouring regions, an exchange of experience and the passing-on of information, the use of methods for local development, the mobilization of all private and public operators and of those involved in projects to secure the eco-label for the area in question;

29. Would welcome further studies of effective and economically feasible approaches to stimulating the local potential with regard to the creation of jobs and/or maintaining current levels of employment;

30. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.