Employment
Employment : This is one of the key concerns of the European Union (EU) Member States. Following on from the 1993 White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, the Essen European Council (December 1994) identified five priority areas for action to promote employment: (1) improving employment opportunities by promoting investment in vocational training; (2) increasing the employment-intensiveness of growth; (3) reducing non-wage labour costs; (4) increasing the effectiveness of labour market policies; (5) improving help for groups that are particularly hard hit by unemployment. The Council and the European Commission presented a joint report on the action taken on these five priorities at the Dublin European Council (December 1996). Similarly, the Confidence Pact for Employment presented in June 1996 sought to mobilize all the actors concerned in a genuine employment strategy, make employment a matter of common interest at European level and incorporate the fight against unemployment into a medium and long-term vision of society. With the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999, employment was enshrined as one of the European Community's objectives. The Community has been assigned the new responsibility of working towards a European strategy for employment together with the Member States. To this end, a new title on employment (Title VIII) has been written into the EC Treaty, under which: employment is to be taken into consideration in other Community policies; coordination mechanisms are to be established at Community level (adoption each year by the Council of guidelines on employment compatible with the broad economic policy guidelines, surveillance of their implementation in the Member States, creation of an employment committee); the possibility for the Council, acting by a qualified majority, to adopt incentive measures, including pilot projects and recommendations to Member States, in the light of its annual review of their employment policies. An extraordinary summit on employment held in Luxembourg on 21 November 1997 agreed that the European Employment Strategy should focus on four themes: employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and equal opportunities. The Member States then decided to bring forward to 1998 the application of the provisions on coordinating their employment policies. At the Lisbon European Summit in March 2000, the heads of state and government reached agreement on a new strategic goal for the EU for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. To reach the EU target of full employment by 2010 set by the Lisbon European Council, the new communication on the future of the European Employment Strategy, published in January 2003, established several priorities: to reduce the unemployment rate; to encourage women to enter the labour market; to encourage people who have reached retirement age to stay in employment; to promote lifelong learning; to promote entrepreneurship; and to combat undeclared work. See: Coordinated strategy for employment; Employment General Principles; Employmentpolicy; Employment promotion and protection against employment; European Confidence Pact for Employment; European Employment Strategy
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