Brussels, 17/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - Protecting people without jobs in order to avoid social exclusion, whilst promoting job creation and budgetary balance in social protection systems: this is the main message to come out of the second work session of the EPSCO Council on employment and social policy which was chaired by the Danish Employment Minister Mette Frederiksen, on Friday 17 February. Although the outlines of the objective of reconciling the search for financial stability and budgetary cleansing, as stipulated in the euro plus pact, with the adoption of measures to promote job creation and preserve the European social model, were sketched out at the European Council of 30 January, the employment and social affairs ministers, meeting in Brussels, debated specific ways of implementing a strategy of this kind, which seeks to help the economic growth of the EU to bounce back. This objective appears, amongst other things, in the joint report on employment in the third report of the social protection committee, which the ministers adopted unanimously, with the exception of the first of these, on which the United Kingdom abstained.
The debate during this session was devoted to the EUROPE 2020 strategy and measures taken individually by the member states to achieve the objectives of this. Opening the debate, Commissioner Laszlo Andor (employment, social affairs and inclusion) stressed the need to carry out budgetary consolidation policies with a similar effort and to ensure effective social protection. In the view of the commissioner, new supervision mechanisms, included in the European semester, must be used to assess the effectiveness of the practices set in place by the member states. However, the conclusions on a political stance on priority actions in the fields of employment and social policies for 2012, which the ministers adopted unanimously, also stressed the need to reform social protection systems, and call on the member states to bring down barriers, notably tax barriers, which are hindering job creation, particularly for young people.
For young people, several ministers stressed the danger represented by excluding these people from the employment market from the very start of their professional lives. Youth unemployment, which certain ministers described as a real scourge in Europe, needs to be targeted specifically. More training, particularly practical training in the form of apprenticeship systems and paid work placements, more targeted investment in education, guaranteeing a balance between supply and demand on the work market and making better use of the European instruments, such as the European Social Fund: these are a few of the measures which arose in the debate at the EPSCO Council for promoting youth employment, as the level of young people without jobs is now above 22% on average across the EU.
The heavily Danish influenced “flexicurity” was stressed during the conclusions as a synonym for action carried out in two directions at the same time. We must both ensure an adequate level of social protection, but also reduce the costs of this and include in it incentives for the long-term unemployed, so that it “is worth it for them to take a job”, in the words of the Polish Minister for Employment and Social Policy, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. Flexicurity is a notion the European Commission wishes to promote for the whole of the EU and specific tools will be unveiled when the next employment package is presented in the autumn, said Mr Andor. A summary report of this debate will be prepared by the Danish Presidency ahead of the next European Council, scheduled for 1 and 2 March. (JK/transl.fl)