Brussels, 16/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - During Anna Diamantopoulou's visit to Budapest on Friday, she and Hungarian Minister Istvàn Stumpf signed a joint assessment of progress made towards preparing the Hungarian employment market for EU membership. This assessment (already made with five other candidate countries) is positive, as Hungary has been successful in increasing its productivity and in reducing its unemployment rate (to 6.4%). Nonetheless, the assessment stresses the low employment rate (56.4% compared to 64.3% on average in the EU) and a series of challenges that Hungary must face up to. These challenges include: setting in place more job incentive measures in the tax and social benefit systems, and the modernisation of the education and training systems.