Brussels, 28/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - On a proposal from President Romano Prodi, and Commissioners Viviane Reding (Education), Anna Diamantopoulou (Employment) and Frits Bolkestein (Internal Market), the Commission adopted a communication on 1 March on "New European Labour Markets, Open to All, with Access for All", which the Commission hopes will be ratified at the Summit of Stockholm. It is a question of a new two-stage strategy, aimed at opening up the labour markets in Europe by 2005: - the first consists in tackling the obvious major obstacles to the emergence of new European labour markets, such as acquiring, updating and obtaining Europe-wide recognition of modern work skills, removing barriers to mobility presented by social security and pension systems, and providing straightforward access to information about jobs and training throughout Europe; - the second stage consists in setting up a high-level business-led task force to look at skills and mobility problems in more depth, in particular the skills gap in the information and communications technologies sector. On the basis of the task force's report, the European Commission will propose an action plan comprising a package of initiatives for 2005, and which will be submitted to the European Council of Barcelona, in the spring of 2002.
The mobility of Europeans within the EU still remains low (0.4% of the population each year), notably in comparison to the United States. The causes of this are many: linguistic and cultural, lack of information and qualification recognition. The Commission's strategy will take the form, initially, of:
1. presenting in 2002 draft legislation introducing a uniform, transparent and flexible system for the recognition of professional qualifications, and aimed at developing automatic recognition.
2. an e-learning action plan, in March already, aimed at accelerating the adaptation of schools and centres of learning in Europe to the new information and communications technologies and promoting access for all Europeans to these technologies;
3. a Community action plan on lifelong education and training identifying priorities common to the Fifteen in this field, the importance of which does not cease growing;
4. the putting into practice of an open method of coordination between ministers of education (like the one established in Lisbon) to exchange good practice for the ongoing reforms of systems of teaching. Adopted on 12 February by the Education Council, the report on the concrete goals of educational systems places emphasis, notably, on education-quality assessment systems, broadening access to education and training and opening up European schools to the rest of the world and to new technologies;
5. the removal of obstacles to the mobility of students and teachers. With the action plan for mobility adopted by the European Council of Nice and the recommendation presently being adopted on the recommendation of Viviane Reding, important steps have been taken along these lines. The Commission is also considering creating, in cooperation with national and local public authorities, a One-stop European Mobility Information Site providing comprehensive and easily accessible information necessary for Europeans wishing to take advantage of opportunities offered by the single market;
6. presentation, before the end of this year, of a proposal on supplementary pensions;
7. adoption by the Council and EP of pending proposals in the field of the modernisation of social security for migrant workers;
8. presentation of a Communication, in March already, on the removal of obstacles to cross-border supplementary pensions and a proposal on the transferability of supplementary pensions by the end of the year.
On the basis of the work of the high-level task force, the Commission will in a second stage establish a package of initiatives to be presented in Barcelona in the spring of 2002.
"New Europe-wide labour markets are emerging due to globalisation and technological developments, but are running up against many obstacles that we want to remove by 2005 to open and render all these markets accessible", declared Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou (Employment) at a press conference she gave alongside her counterpart Viviane Reding (Education). "It is a question of an opportunity for multinationals, and even individuals, especially the young who would like more mobility in their careers". She then continued: "Today, we are proposing a two-stage policy: removing the barriers to that mobility and allowing for free movement in Europe. This has to be guaranteed both at European and national level.
Mrs Diamantopoulou noted: the possibility of working in another Member States constitutes a right since the Treaty of Rome. Today, we are in agreement to convert this right into reality for all the citizens in Europe.
The novelty of this strategy, for Viviane Reding, is that we are no longer talking of a labour market, social and economic affairs, but of well trained men and women, and initial and life long education, which are the keys to sustainable growth in Europe. With regards to the lack of suitable personnel in the information technology sector, Mrs Reding added that the inadequacy between supply and demand costs the European economy EUR 100 billion per year and that during the coming years, there will be a deficit of 1.5 million people to fill the number of jobs in this sector. The deficits and gap in competences slow growth and the raising of standards of living. Life long education and training constitute the only solution to the problems caused by these deficits and gaps, concluded the Commissioner.
Questioned over the problems linked to the transfer of social rights from one country to another, Anna Diamantopoulou stated: That is where it hurts, it is the reason for low mobility (0.4%) in the EU (against 2.6% in the United States). I cannot say which rules will apply for pensions and their transferability, but we will present a proposal on this issue before the end of 2001. We are not here to change the systems in the Member States, stated Mrs Reding, but to build solid bridges between different systems so that people who, for example, work 10 years in Luxembourg, 20 years in France and 10 years in Germany, have complete pensions without being discriminated against. Mrs Reding added with regards to the mobility of professors, researchers and students, that 1 million youths and professors have been able to travel in the EU thanks to the existing European programmes, a figure that will be doubled in Uppsala, during the informal meeting of the Education and Research Ministers, at the end of the week. As for knowing if the barriers will have completely disappeared in 2005, Mrs Diamantopoulou felt that this depends on the Council's decisions and it is manageable if the Stockholm Summit supports us. Finally, to the question of knowing how to tackle the deductibility of pension plans, Anna Diamantopoulou explained that there exists a whole range of pension systems in the EU. It is why we will never have a harmonisation of these systems, thus, it is necessary to make them compatible, that is to say that people must be able to accumulate their pension rights while going from one to another. Also recalling that in the United States, there are different pension systems, but only one social security card, which the citizen can use everywhere. This is the solution, concluded the Commissioner.