Brussels, 09/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - The second meeting of the macro-economic dialogue, which was held at political level on Monday evening after the Ecofin Council under the chairmanship of Portuguese Finance Minister Pina Moura and with the participation, notably, of Anna Diamantopoulou and Vice-President of the European Central Bank Christian Noyer (see EUROPE of 6 May, p.9-10), begun its work with a presentation by Pedro Solbes on the current economic situation in the EU and of the prospects of development. In this context, the Commission's recommendation relating to the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines 2000 (BEPG) was the subject of an exchange of views during which all the participants showed their agreement of the fact that the situation is improving in Europe and that growth is recovering with a little more than 3% on average in the Community. The main question discussed was that of knowing what to do so that this growth is kept at a high level.
The secretary-general of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Emilio Gabaglio, insisted on the need to continue to carry out a European policy based on sustainable growth. All the actors, he said, must contribute to this in a joint effort and the Member State governments must do everything they can to support a strategy aimed at more growth and job generation. The president of the European employers (UNICE), Baron Georges Jacobs, said for his part that he shared on the whole the BEPG 2000. He insisted on the need to speed up effort to reduce deficit and public debt and the pursuit of structural reforms adopted by the Lisbon Summit, in order to promote the conditions for innovation and to allow the EU to catch up with the United States technologically. UNICE expressed on this a series of recommendations in its benchmarking 2000 report entitled "stimulating creativeness and innovation in Europe", to which EUROPE will return in tomorrow's bulletin.