MEPs criticise ‘cosmetic’ job creation plan

Date: 18/09/1997

By Simon Coss and Rory Watson

EFFORTS by the European Parliament to put together an employment-friendly budget package ahead of this autumn's jobs summit have been criticised by some MEPs as an empty exercise in creative accounting.

The Parliament plans to bundle all of the EU's existing job creation initiatives together in order to give the Union's efforts to generate employment a higher profile.

But critics argue that all the exercise will do is shift around already existing funds. “This is a cosmetic exercise which will fool nobody. No new money is involved,” said Graham Watson, economic affairs spokesman for the Liberal Group.

This latest development comes amid increasingly frantic efforts by Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who will host the November summit, to ensure it does not turn into yet another occasion for Europe's political leaders to make lofty statements without committing themselves to concrete action.

However, Juncker's room for manoeuvre is being severely hampered by the fact that his EU partners have made it clear that no new money will be made available for job creation schemes. It seems the best he can hope for is that member states agree to respect a set of employment guidelines currently being drawn up by the European Commission.

Indeed, MEPs are warning that, as they stand, member states' spending plans for next year's EU budget could even reduce the Union's ability to generate employment.

The Parliament argues that national plans to cut 5&percent; off 'internal policy' spending will restrict job creation possibilities.

The funds under threat would normally be spent on areas such as training, education and help for Europe's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This last sector in particular is frequently held up by the EU institutions as one of the areas most likely to generate jobs in the future.

MEPs say that the budget plans presented to them in Strasbourg this week by Luxembourg Budget Minister Marc Fischbach have only served to confirm their fears.

German Christian Democrat MEP Stanislaw Tillich, the Parliament's rapporteur on the 1998 budget, said that the spending proposals ignored the clear message from the June Amsterdam summit that fighting unemployment must be considered an absolute priority.

Meanwhile, agriculture ministers are also preparing to discuss the employment aspects of farming when they meet next week (22-23 September).

The discussion is likely to focus, among other things, on the plight of young farmers, amid fears that young people are having increasing trouble getting into the industry because of high property prices and the prohibitive costs of buying up agricultural quotas.