If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well

Date: 12/06/1997

IT HAS been a grand week for jobs. Even though Renault's Vilvoorde plant is almost certain to stay closed with the loss of 3,000 jobs, at least the new governmental brooms in London and Paris have decided to put the employment issue right at the top of the EU's busy agenda.

Enough of those crusty old right-wingers and their irrelevant bickering over single currencies, subsidiarity, or the endless acronyms of common foreign and security policies, declared Tony Blair and Lionel Jospin.

A leftish wind of change is blowing through European politics that will make the Union's debates and institutions so much more relevant to the man in the street by talking jobs.

The danger is that constantly raising the issue at EU level and issuing clarion calls for action gives the impression, even to those who should know better, that EU institutions can do something concrete about continental Europe's chronic inability to create enough jobs to soak up its working-age population.

When the UK's Gordon Brown trumpeted his arrival at a regular EU finance ministers' meeting as a second-coming of the jobs messiah, he was obviously still on the campaign trail. His analysis revealed that labour market flexibility, the eradication of disincentives to work and better education could create employment. Fortunately, given that they had other things on their mind, his fellow ministers were able to avoid the temptation to burst out laughing or give Brown a good hiding. There is an old English saying: “You cannot teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”

Take a look back at the EU summits of recent years. Copenhagen in 1993, Essen in 1994, and Florence and Dublin last year were all dubbed 'jobs summits'. The rest of the EU can talk about employment without the help of the crusading Blair government. Similarly, the German authorities hardly need to be lectured on the importance of mentioning jobs in their 'stability pact' by the French, who have proved how easy it is to be simultaneously one of the planet's richest countries and yet institutionalise double-digit unemployment rates.

Continental Europe must generate jobs much faster. This will be done by redressing the balance of power between the working 'insiders' and young under-experienced 'outsiders', as well as by removing fiscal and regulatory disincentives to hire.

While the Union can play a role in this, the real challenge lies with governments - and to suggest otherwise can only raise false expectations which will further harm the EU's already tarnished image.