Hi-tech jobs call backed by Gueterres

Date: 10/06/1999

By Tim Jones

PORTUGUESE Prime Minister Antonio Gueterres has thrown his weight behind French calls for a European initiative to match the US' performance in high-technology industry.

Gueterres, who takes charge of EU business next January, has promised to put together a Europe of innovation and knowledge programme in time for a special jobs summit in Lisbon in March 2000.

” A new paradigm is emerging: a society of innovation and knowledge, the main source of wealth of nations, regions, companies and individuals,” he said in a letter to fellow EU leaders. “Europe is lagging behind in this area and must find its own way to attain a new competitive level.”

French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn has campaigned for the creation of a Union 'innovation' policy, pointing out that one third of US economic growth comes from information technologies - twice that of France.

At last week's summit in Cologne, EU leaders agreed to Strauss-Kahn's request that the European Investment Bank should expand its lending to innovative small and medium-sized enterprises by €1 billion.

EIB communications chief Henry Marty-Gauquié promised swift action to add the cash to the bank's eight-month-old European Technology Facility.

In his letter, Gueterres also responded to a joint request from Spanish and British Premiers José Maria Aznar and Tony Blair for more work to bring together the various strands of EU employment policy. The UK and Spain are keen to promote a more free-market and deregulatory vision of jobs policy than the French, Italians and Germans.

This German-inspired pact sets up a forum in which representatives of employers, labour unions, government ministers and the European Central Bank can meet.