Santer to deliver blunt jobs warning

Date: 12/12/1996

EU LEADERS will receive their starkest warning yet this weekend that individual job-creation initiatives are useless unless they are introduced as part of an overall Union approach.

In a review of the first six months of his much-vaunted 'confidence pact', Commission President Jacques Santer will tell this weekend's Dublin summit that Europe “takes many specific measures concerning employment, but does not seem to realise ... that these measures are part of an overall strategy”.

But despite this renewed effort to inject impetus into the pact, member state officials warn that many governments remain suspicious of attempts to give policy-making a more European feel.

Santer will point to progress in completing the single market, but will warn of “unacceptable delays” - notably the continued stalemate in winning agreement on the European company statute and on biotechnological inventions.

He will suggest that a new deadline of 1 January 1999 should be set to plug the remaining gaps in the internal market, promise “ambitious and specific proposals” to develop the service sector and urge further efforts to ease the legislative burden on European firms.

Santer will also urge governments to “stop acting as if flexibility and the European model of society were incompatible”.

A final note of optimism will be provided by the planned launch of around 60 pilot projects next year under the umbrella of the so-called 'territorial pacts'.

Santer's upbeat and determined message will be buoyed by the decision of employers and unions to come forward with a joint declaration on the pact, after months of cynicism from the European employers' federation UNICE.

Officials from some member states believe this is a real sign of progress. “There is now a proposal from those who matter to join in concrete initiatives. The process is rolling. Something has really happened,” said one.

But there are still a number of EU governments which firmly believe the European approach should not be exaggerated. “Employment policy at European level is precisely what the UK, Germany and France are fighting against in the Intergovernmental Conference,” said one official.

Another claimed the summit conclusions were unlikely to include much more than a set of recommendations that member states could follow according to their own economic circumstances.