Brussels, 18/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - In its plenary session in Strasbourg last week, the European Parliament adopted the "technical" report by French Socialist Michel Rocard on carrying out a survey of the labour force in the EC, endorsing the Commission's position and asking to be kept informed should the Commission plan to substantially alter the proposal or replace it with another. Under the proposal, all Member States would have to carry out a survey of the labour force - a quarterly and annual statistical survey (rather than only in the spring) - in order to provide comparable data on the level, structure and changes in employment and unemployment in Europe.
An EP press release explains that Michel Rocard requested the Regulation be amended to make the surveys compulsory since not all Member States (Germany stands out in particular) had taken the necessary measures to ensure that a continuous survey was carried out in reasonable timescales, and that such failings seriously reduced the utility of the surveys. The Vienna European Council (December 1998) stressed that statistics had to be made more comparable if the European employment strategy were to be monitored.