New blow to confidence pact for jobs

Date: 23/05/1996

By Michael Mann

JACQUES Santer's officials are putting the finishing touches to a package of proposals designed to put flesh on the bones of the Commission president's “confidence pact for employment”, despite signs that new cracks are appearing in the much-publicised plan.

According to Commission officials, the package will include concrete measures to turn the pact concept announced by Santer in January into a reality, incorporating feedback from his tour of national capitals and the recent round table of employers' and union organisations.

Santer intends to present his proposals to fellow Commissioners at their meeting on 5 June before taking his campaign for more concerted EU-wide action on jobs to the Florence summit.

With the 21-22 June meeting of European leaders being widely trailed as a “summit for jobs”, Union ministers are also finalising their positions on the issue in the run-up to Florence.

EU social affairs ministers are expected to give their blessing to a separate interim report on employment, which has already been extensively discussed by Coreper (the EU's committee of permanent representatives), when they meet on 3 June.

At a joint dinner with finance ministers, they will also prepare the ground for a tripartite meeting with the social partners on 14-15 June.

The interim report will assess progress in establishing a stable structure for EU employment policies, including the Commission's proposal to institutionalise the previously ad hoc employment committee, and examine the progress made in establishing a basic set of indicators to monitor the five employment priorities decided on at Essen in December 1994. It will focus particularly on three key areas identified by EU leaders in Madrid - helping the young and long-term unemployed, and improving equal opportunities.

However, Commission and ministerial discussions on the confidence pact and the results of the recent round table look like being overshadowed by comments this week by François Perigot, president of the European employers' federation UNICE.

Perigot clearly cast doubt on the Community's role in fighting unemployment and suggested that the social partners were far from reaching a consensus on how to cut EU unemployment, which currently stands at about 18 million.

His remarks have dealt another blow to a pact which has already been dogged by controversy over Santer's call for 2 billion ecu of unspent cash from Union coffers to be diverted to the Trans-European Networks and other job-creating projects.

An EU official admitted that Perigot's comments represented “a damaging blow to the pact”, adding: “This is not the way to get consensus from the unions by simply taking a narrow view of the need for competitiveness and deregulation. People are asking where the business contribution to all this is.”

Confirming that Perigot was expressing the federation's - and not merely a personal - view, an official stressed that UNICE did not “want a pact in the form of a signed agreement on anything”.

She added: “There is nothing we can do at a European level to create jobs, so we shouldn't be talking about firm commitments. What is needed is innovative thinking about action member states can take to deal with the problem.”

But a spokesman for the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) claimed that Perigot's view “reduced the chances of finding feasible solutions to the problems of unemployment to almost zero”. He stressed that it ran totally counter to the joint approach adopted by the two organisations in Florence last autumn.

The ETUC believes that far from the answers being solely linked to labour market policies, efforts to get people back to work should be put in a wider macro-economic context, hence the involvement of finance ministers.

“Santer's plan to reinvest unspent budget money in infrastructure projects will not solve the problem, but it is politically very important to create a European framework on which national governments can build,” explained the ETUC official.