Unions attack ‘missed opportunity’ for jobs

Date: 27/06/1996

By Michael Mann

EUROPEAN trade unions have slammed the Florence summit as another in the “excessively long list of missed opportunities” in the fight against unemployment.

In a bitter attack on EU heads of government, European Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Emilio Gabaglio decried the fact that no real investment decisions had been taken and claimed governments had done no more than

pay lip-service to Commission President Jacques Santer's 'confidence pact'.

“This sort of attitude does nothing for the EU's credibility with the unemployed, young people or workers and undermines the consensus built up around the blueprint for monetary union,” he said.

His remarks were in stark contrast to the reaction from European employers to the outcome of last weekend's summit, with an official at employers' federation UNICE describing the lengthy conclusions reached in Florence as “sensible and absolutely right”.

While conceding that the deliberations had not been especially decisive, business leaders this week repeated their view that the difficult decisions on how to put people back to work had to be taken at national level.

Despite being billed by the Italians as the 'summit for jobs', Florence did little to take the debate further, restating the brave words of previous European summits and adding further pieces of paper to the considerable pile of well-intentioned initiatives for job creation.

The ball now falls into Ireland's court as it prepares to take over the EU presidency next week. Irish officials say Dublin's main hope is “to bring the debate on employment policy down from the rhetorical level”.

Taking a leaf out of Italy's book, Ireland is planning a further 'tripartite' conference on employment to take place in Cork in November. A similar gathering in Rome earlier this month served to emphasise the amount of daylight between the views of employers and unions.

The main task facing the Irish will be to boil down the “whole pile of things in the Florence conclusions” into the single employment report promised for the end-of-year summit in Dublin. Building on the lofty ideals expressed so often over the months since the Essen summit in December 1995, Ireland seems determined to move away from rhetoric and demonstrate to the Union's citizens that EU initiatives really can cut into jobless figures hovering around the 18 million mark.

“The cynical side of the argument says all this effort won't create a single extra job. But we cannot justify philosophical discussions on treaty changes and persuade people to vote positively in referendums unless the Union is seen to be doing something practical,” said an Irish official.

Priorities will include providing a tangible bench-mark of what the member states are doing on a national level to combat unemployment and pressing for agreement on plans to formalise the employment and labour market policy committee.

Ireland is also extremely keen to press the idea of 'territorial and local employment pacts' similar to its own 'local employment initiatives'.

The summit conclusions called on member states to choose regions to take part in pilot projects, but British finance minister Kenneth Clarke was among those who responded coolly to the idea. Fears remain in some countries that local initiatives will be used as a back door to by-pass national governments and pay structural fund money direct to local authorities.

In the meantime, a high-level working group of senior civil servants will look at the ideas in the Santer 'confidence pact' in much the same way as the group looking at French President Jacques Chirac's proposals for a 'European social model'.

Many governments feel the Chirac initiative may be aimed at taking the gloss off Santer's plans and providing a counterweight from the champion of universal service to calls for liberalisation which were reinforced in Florence.