Brussels, 12/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - In Brussels on 12 September, as part of the European Year of Workers' Mobility, Commissioner Vladimir Spidla and the President of McDonald's Europe Denis Hennequin launched the “McPassport”, the biggest Europe-wide private sector mobility initiative. The “passport” is official certification of the training and skills that employees have acquired while working for McDonald's, and is designed to support the movement of McDonald's restaurant employees throughout the European Union. The McPassport will be available to all McDonald's employees who wish to work in another European country and who have reached the required performance level, Mr Hennequin told press in Brussels. He said the McPassport “is a key element of our continuing effort to improve our standards as an employer”. This initiative “underlines our commitment to continuous improvement and to making a job at McDonald's as fulfilling and rewarding as possible. … I believe that we can always learn something from any other person we may meet, anywhere in the world,” he concluded.
Welcoming the initiative, Mr Spidla said that for many years, the Commission had dedicated itself to issues of special interest to the citizens of Europe. “The Commission promotes policies and encourages Member States to implement them, but if companies do not apply them, they are unworkable,” commented the Commissioner. McPassport, he said, “is an excellent example of interaction between the setting up of a policy and its implementation on the ground, even if the company is American!” (A joke to which Mr Hennequin replied, “The brain may be American, the rest isn't!”) Mr Spidla then went on to note, firstly, that, although the difference is narrowing, there is greater mobility in the United States than in Europe. In Europe, the percentage of citizens living and working in another Member State rose from 1.5% in 2000 to over 2% in 2005, due, in part, to the flow of workers from the new Member States to the EU15, and also to increased mobility among young people in the whole EU. Secondly, he noted that the reverse was being seen in the US, with the level of citizens working in a different State falling from 3.4% in 2000 to 2.8% in 2004, this notably because of the effects of an ageing population. There is an ageing population in Europe too, but it is counterbalanced by the mobility of young people and workers from the new Member States. Legal, administrative and practical obstacles (such as the difficulty of finding accommodation) were hindering the development of a genuine culture of mobility within the European labour market, the Commissioner acknowledged, and he welcomed the McDonald's initiative which will allow mobility experiences, whether on a geographical level or a professional one, to be gathered. He concluded with the hope that this initiative would contribute to achieving the aim of the European Year of Workers' Mobility 2006 of allowing every worker to experience mobility in another country or sector of activity.
McDonald's Europe is the leading food service company in Europe with more than 225,000 people employed in the 25 Member States of the EU (Information: carmen.vroonen@be.mcd.com)