Brussels, 16/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has approved a programme in favour of education, training and employment in Germany, for a seven-year period. It will have an overall budget of EUR 10.809 billion. This amount includes public funding (5.424 billion), private funding (629 million) and EU aid (4.756 billion). The "Single Programming Document" (SPD) for Germany defines the programme of the European Social Fund (ESF) in this country under Objective 3.
SPD priorities are: 1) active and preventive labour market policies (EUR 1.912 billion, or 40% of ESF allocation); 2) social inclusion (EUR 948 million or 20% of ESF allocation); 3) vocational and general education, life-long learning (EUR 360 million or 8% of ESF allocation); 4) adaptability and entrepreneurship (EUR 828 million or 17% of ESF allocation); 5) equal opportunities for women and men (EUR 471 million or 10% of ESF allocation). A further 1% of the ESF financing (EUR 47 million) will go towards supporting small projects promoting job creation and local social development; and 4% (EUR 190 million) will finance technical assistance measures.
The SPD outlines how the horizontal issues - local employment initiatives, information society and gender mainstreaming - have been taken into account in the development of the Objective 3 strategy and in the selection of priorities.
Commenting on this decision, Anna Diamantopoulou, Employment Commissioner, stressed that the "key challenge for the German jobs market for the coming years is to develop the service sector", but also to "tackle the problem of persistently high long-term unemployment rates among adults as well as unemployment in general, especially in the East German Länder, to improve employment possibilities for older workers and to further reduce gender and the segregation in the workplace".