WRITTEN QUESTION E-0317/02

by Philip Bushill-Matthews (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(12 February 2002)

Subject: Preparations for the European Council meeting in Barcelona

The 2000 Lisbon European Council Council called for agreement on the European Social Agenda at the Nice European Council in December. Now that the European Social Agenda has indeed been approved, how does the Commission believe that it will be able to reverse the rising trend of unemployment, and does the Commission specifically agree or disagree that the structure of EU labour markets is currently still too rigid?

Answer given by Mrs Diamantopoulou on behalf of the Commission

(2 April 2002)

The Social Policy Agenda (SPA) which the Lisbon European Council of 23 and 24 March 2000 asked the Commission to prepare, has been adopted by the Nice European Council of 7 and 9 December 2000. The most recent report about progress made in implementing the SPA so far has been adopted by the Commission on 19 February 2002(1). It concludes that work is well under way and that commitments are increasingly transposed into concrete action. Furthermore, new challenges are taken up and new initiatives are planned, e.g. with the proposed Action Plan on Skills and Mobility or the impact evaluation of the European Employment Strategy.

The SPA Scoreboard has to be seen in the wider context of the Lisbon strategy and the Commission's spring report for Barcelona. That report, the Commission's key contribution to the Barcelona European Council (The Lisbon Strategy Making change happen(2)), provides a basis for the assessment of progress made towards the Lisbon objectives, including the goal of full employment. Although it recognizes that the four-year fall in unemployment has been interrupted and that job creation has slowed considerably, the communication expresses cautious optimism that the current economic downturn will be short-lived, and that the current conditions do not call into question the basically sound economic fundamentals, or the need to pursue the Lisbon strategy.

The Lisbon strategy aims at increasing the coherence and mutually reinforcing character of economic, employment and social policies.

The structural reforms pursued under the European Employment Strategy (EES) since 1997 have already resulted in better long term performances of European labour markets, as shown by the following facts documented in the Joint Employment Report for 2001:

- despite the fact that economic growth has been weaker than in the 1980s, there has been a marked acceleration in job creation;

- the Union has experienced a faster and deeper reduction in unemployment rates;

- the Union is also better equipped in terms of skills than in the past. A higher level of education facilitates adaptation to changes in economic activity;

- last but not least, following the stability oriented policies implemented over recent years, this occurred without increased inflationary pressure and the budgetary situation in the Member States is now much stronger that before the European employment strategy was launched.

If these efforts are sustained the Union should be able to absorb the slowdown more rapidly and therefore the current cyclical downturn should not affect the pace of reform.

The Commission considers that the continuation of the ongoing structural reform will further reduce persisting rigidities in the European labour markets.

Priority elements of such reform are:

- disincentives deterring people from taking up and remaining in a job;

- barriers to greater occupational and geographical mobility;

- the limited capacity to anticipate and manage change, which should be improved in particular by social dialogue in the face of corporate restructuring.

(1) COM(2002) 89 final.

(2) COM(2002) 14 final.