WRITTEN QUESTION P-4051/97 by Monica Baldi (UPE) to the Commission (15 December 1997)

Subject: The insurance company Fondiaria Assicurazioni

The insurance group Fondiaria Assicurazioni is reorganizing the company in Italy, with a proposed 2 000 job cuts over 5 years, 900 dismissals, a large-scale reduction in the number of managers and employees and a drastic cut in agents' commission.

Insurance agents, forced to choose between giving up their jobs and working for next to nothing, chose the former, thereby causing the unexpected closure of agencies in Italy and endangering the jobs of the employees in those agencies.

This regrettable situation involves thousands of agents, more than 10 000 employees and assistants and millions of policy-holders, with extremely adverse effects not only on employment but also on the whole insurance sector.

In the space of barely three months 39 managers have been dismissed and 240 000 policies have been cancelled, which is equivalent to 5% of the whole group's portfolio. All this has caused unacceptable inconvenience to customers, who have been unexpectedly deprived of the services to which they were entitled.

Can the Commission say:

1. what steps it intends to take, in the light of the recent decisions taken at the special Employment Summit held in Luxembourg on 20 and 21 November last, to safeguard the hundreds of workers who will suddenly find themselves without a job;

2. what steps it intends to take to ensure that the enormous wave of lay-offs or closures does not further aggravate the already difficult employment situation in the sector and the situation of the families affected;

3. what it intends to do to avoid adverse effects not only in the field of employment but also in the insurance sector?

Answer given by Mr Flynn on behalf of the Commission (30 January 1998)

The introduction of an 'employment' chapter in the new Treaty adopted in Amsterdam in June 1997, as well as the conclusions of the recent extraordinary European Council in Luxembourg, are designed to strengthen coordination of national employment policies through the definition of common guidelines.

This new procedure allows the Member States to reconsider the employment situation each year in a global, integrated approach which embraces healthy macroeconomic policies, a smoothly functioning single market and the taking into account of the employment factor in all the Community policies.

However, employment policy is a matter for the Member States, as are measures to prevent and tackle unemployment. In the context of its employment system, Italy has at its disposal a whole raft of instruments to prevent and protect persons whose jobs are at risk. Basically these are social shock absorbers, which are currently being rationalised. These mechanisms are increasingly being combined with 'active measures' in the framework of sectoral agreements, allowing beneficiaries to participate in vocational retraining programmes so as to make it easier for them to find jobs again.

In its conclusions of 21 November 1997, the European Council urged that particular attention be paid to sectors undergoing major industrial change. It invited a high-level expert group under the Commission's authority to analyse the future of industrial change in the Community and to study the best ways of coping with it in order to ensure that the economic and social impact is compatible with the principles of the EC Treaty. A first report will be presented to the Council after consultation of the social partners with a view to its transmission to the Cardiff European Council.