Employment. Joint report 1999

The committee adopted a report by Mr Winfried MENRAD (EPP/ED, D) on the Commission's draft Joint Employment Report 1999. The committee stressed the need for the broad economic guidelines and the employment guidelines to be discussed and adopted simultaneously. It felt that Parliament should participate in developing the employment policy guidelines and should monitor implementation of the European employment initiatives in the Member States jointly with the Commission. It also called for Parliament to be fully involved in the macroeconomic dialogue. The report urged Member States to pursue their employment policies in a more balanced manner, and felt that the financial aid granted to enterprises should be monitored better to ensure that it genuinely helped to create jobs. As far as the employment policy guidelines were concerned, the report supported the proposal for a new guideline on communication and information technology and urged that the concept of lifelong learning should be strengthened. It called for verifiable minimum targets for participation in further training and urged the Member States to gear their training systems more closely to the requirements of the labour market, in particular the service sector which has high growth potential. The committee also called for common social standards in various areas of employment and social legislation. Other points raised in the report included the need for benchmarks and criteria for gender mainstreaming in national employment policies and the introduction of specific quantifiable targets, including at EU level. Lastly, the committee repeated its call for comparability of national statistics in order to facilitate uniform appraisal and monitoring.