Brussels, 11/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - In a report published on Monday on progress between 1997 and 2000 in terms of reforming the labour market (one of the major themes at the Barcelona Summit), the European Central Bank notes that for most countries in the eurozone, the measures taken "contributed to the strong employment growth and the considerable reduction in unemployment" but "significant mismatches are still present in a number of areas, leaving ample scope for the continuation of the labour market reform process". The ECB recommends that "each country identify the root causes of these mismatches and implement appropriate measures". The ECB says that some of the reforms "have been modest or have been introduced recently and are only gradually bearing fruit". The ECB added that "improved job mediation, more flexible wages and increased wage differentiation, improved education, training and life-long learning, reforms of tax and benefit systems, less restrictive employment protection regulation, working-time flexibility as well as measures to increase labour mobility all help towards making the matching process more efficient and labour markets more flexible". The Bank admits that is difficult to assess the extent to which the reforms help the labour market situation. In the conclusions, it notes that the analysis of the impact of the reforms has run up against problems in distinguishing between cyclical changes and structural changes on the one hand and statistical obstacles on the other (particularly unreliable vacancy data). The report is available on the ECB's website: http: //http://www.ecb.int.