Benchmarking Working Europe 2005
Description
Keeping the social in Lisbon
If 2004 was a crucial year for Europe in many respects - not only was the European Union enlarged by the accession of 10 new members but it received both a new Parliament and a new Commission - 2005 will be another crucial year, as it will see the emergence of a reviewed Lisbon strategy. This year's Benchmarking Working Europe demonstrates that, if there is one main conclusion to be learned from the Lisbon mid-term review, and if Europe wishes to be serious about the Lisbon goal of high employment / high productivity and social cohesion, then policy-makers need to focus the Lisbon process on a synergy of social and economic policies.
Europe will not experience a return to a growth agenda simply by 'ditching' the social policy agenda and proclaiming 'competitiveness' the central goal. If Europe is to remain genuinely committed to an agenda of sustainable competitiveness through the building of a knowledge society, then massive investments in a social agenda are urgent and should not be postponed.
The ETUI/ETUC's Benchmarking Working Europe 2005 monitors, for the fifth time, success and failure in the Lisbon-relevant fields of employment, social and macro-economic policies in the 25 European Union countries. Major conclusions reached include the following:
- Employment should be increased through a policy mix that includes more active labour market policy and a pro-active macroeconomic policy to support domestic demand, providing investment incentives and boosting productivity growth. Under no circumstances, however, should this open the way to a deterioration of the quality of jobs in the European Union, for job quality is a Lisbon goal in its own right and, what is more, correlates positively with labour productivity.
- Developments in income and wages present a number of challenges to social partners, governments and the EU. One such challenge is that, as a result of the enlargement, overall income and wage differentials within the EU as a whole have increased enormously, despite several specific instances of convergence in this respect in the enlarged EU in recent years.
- The analysis of delocalisation indicates that the situation is far too complex for any easy conclusions to be drawn. While, in the context of transition and enlargement, the overall impacts have so far been positive for both western and eastern Europe, the emergence of serious local and regional tensions cannot be overlooked. Yet, paradoxically, most of the tensions in western Europe appeared at a time when the level of west European investment in the new member states had decreased quite drastically.
A genuine Social Europe still has a long way to go, as documented once again in this Benchmarking Working Europe report. Indeed, the European reality continues to display major shortcomings which
'call for ambitious reforms as to lifelong learning, forms of active labour market intervention, equal treatment and improved public policies (also including better childcare facilities), as well as an ambitious innovation strategy that sees innovation embedded in the social organisation of production and in a strategy that incorporates research and development and infrastructural investment',
state John Monks, General secretary of the ETUC, and Henning Jørgensen, Director of the ETUI.
The Benchmarking report provides detailed information on the following areas of particular relevance to the world of labour in the EU (data supplied in graph and table form accompanied by explanatory texts):
- Social Europe
- employment
- wages, income distribution and labour costs
- working time
- social protection and active ageing
- lifelong learning
- information, consultation and worker participation
- European social dialogue and its implementation
- macroeconomic dialogue
- delocalisation
