Brussels, 19/04/2000 (Agence Europe) - Fully rethink the way one works, reflect on temporary work, set in place a family policy mainly aimed at child minding facilities so that men and women may work together, maintain competition between the social security systems, foreign language teaching - all this is necessary to facilitate the free movement of workers within the EU. These were the main conclusions of the Kangaroo Group meeting, which was held on Tuesday 18 April in Brussels under the chairmanship of MEP Manuel Medina Ortega (PES, Spain) on the theme "Obstacles to worker mobility within the EU". Those taking part included MEPs, representatives of the trade union and employers, experts and university professors.
Ms Odile Quintin, Deputy Director General at the DG Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission, stressed the importance of making a distinction between migration and mobility. With figures to hand, Ms Quintin noted that: - 5% of the EU population are non-nationals of the region in which they live; - one third are citizens of other EU Member States; - one quarter comes from other European regions and 6% come from Central European countries; - one third come from third countries. The immigrants are concentrated in the age group 20-39. Within the EU itself, interregional migration is higher in the northern Member States (2%) than in the south where it is below 1%. Presenting European Community action aimed to abolish obstacles to the free movement of EU workers, Ms Quintin mainly cited the action plan (aimed at improving conditions for the free movement of workers on the European employment market) and the European information network on employment and worker mobility, Eures. For all this, the Lisbon Summit gave a real political thrust, continued Ms Quintin, who noted the importance of the role of social partners in the context of accomplishing concrete projects. "The European Commission has done a great deal for the free movement of workers within the EU", noted MEP Miet Smet, who then asked: "Why don't citizens work in another country?" He went on to cite among the many factors which do not exactly encourage people to move about, cultural differences, the poor knowledge of foreign languages, the fact that companies do not give work to the spouse (which means new family policies should be sought), and the fact that there are still very great differences between regions (poor and rich). Tundé Johnson, Vice-President of International Corporate & Government Affairs at the company Adecco (temporary work) explained the working of his company and his experience with cross-border work, which calls for considerable flexibility.