Finns vow to end stream of new jobs programmes

Date: 27/05/1999

By Tim Jones

FINLAND has promised to stem the EU's stream of job creation initiatives once Union leaders have given their blessing to the 'European employment pact' at next week's summit in Cologne.

Helsinki, which takes over the EU presidency on 1 July, has signalled its resolve to end the duplication caused by employment policy audits under the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties as well as special programmes launched by Luxembourg, the UK and now Germany.

" We have seen every presidency finding a new headline for the same discussions and there are a lot of headlines already," said Finnish Finance Minister and Deputy Premier Sauli Niniistö. "We think we should package them together since the discussions under all these headlines are basically the same."

Under the 'Luxembourg process' established at the jobs summit in November 1997, member states have to submit annual action plans for generating employment including an assessment of the previous year's achievements.

Seven months later, at their Cardiff summit, EU leaders agreed to monitor progress in opening up product, services and capital markets in the interests of job creation. On top of this, the Union's annual broad economic guidelines set targets for reforming labour markets and the new pact will establish a forum to ensure that budgetary, monetary and incomes policies support each other.

" With the employment pact, all the main players - the European Council, the social partners and the European Central Bank - will now sit around the same table," said German Finance Minister Hans Eichel as he finalised the pact for Cologne. "If you think in terms of past developments, this is a real step forward."

The new agreement, which will be nodded through at the summit after winning the approval of finance and employment ministers this week, has been heavily diluted since it was first suggested last December.

Then, the French and German governments called for a pact with teeth, which would commit EU governments to "quantifiable" targets for cutting unemployment numbers. The latest draft simply calls on the Commission to highlight the most effective national job creation schemes when it puts together the Union's annual employment guidelines. Quantifiable targets would only be set by member states "where appropriate".

The centrepiece of the pact now is a "consistent policy mix" which will be brought about by "fruitful macroeconomic dialogue between social partners, fiscal policy-makers and monetary policy-makers within existing institutions".

The Finns were mandated by last December's summit in Vienna to come up with an assessment of the first year of economic policy coordination after the introduction of the euro.

"Since we have this opportunity, we want to look into the whole range of macroeconomic and structural questions and specify what is in the hands of the EU and what is up to member states," said a senior Finnish official. "But the last thing we want to do is create a new Helsinki procedure."

Keyword: Employment Pact.