Brussels, 13/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - To encourage workers to move about more, the European Commission adopted an action plan on Wednesday with 25 concrete actions, including the creation of an EU health card, a model EU CV and a passport of acquired skills (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.17). When presenting the plan to journalists (accompanied by Anna Diamantopoulou and Viviane Reding), President Prodi said it sent out a very strong message confirming the EU's desire to open up the Community's job markets and make them accessible to all in 2005 and he hoped the Barcelona Council would be making a strong political decision in this connection. Prodi stressed that insufficient job mobility was particularly damaging to the more disadvantaged regions and this would increase with enlargement. He asserted the European health card would give immediate access to healthcare across the EU and would be a great leap forward for a social Europe.
Also speaking about the European health card, Anna Diamantopoulou said that the card would be prepared together with Member States by the end of 2002, the Council would decide on the issue at the beginning of 2003 and the card would be in citizens' pockets in 2004. Viviane Reding preferred to stress the need to strengthen basic skills - reading, writing and arithmetic and foreign languages - alongside science and modern technology skills, but that schools had to be better connected with the business world through partnerships. Partnerships would also be required with social partners in terms of life long learning. She called for symbols and European prices to be set up for business and social partners which have set up the best life long learning systems.