Employment in Europe. 1995 annual Report

Following the conclusions of the Commission White Paper "Growth, Competitiveness, Employment" and the action plan on employment, and at the request of the Corfu and Essen European Councils (December 1994), the Commission communication presents a coherent and systematic approach to monitoring employment trends in the Member States and the policies developed in the Union to reduce unemployment. In order to translate this objective into practice, the Commission proposes a system for monitoring employment at Community level, which it calls on the Council to approve. This system aims to ensure that each institution receives systematic information on monitoring by the Commission and can provide regular input to the final summary report, which will present the results once employment trends have been monitored for one year. This report will be used as a basis for the conclusions of the European Council in December 1995, one of the objectives of which is to evaluate the Union's progress on employment. The monitoring system takes the form of successive stages which allow for coherent intervention by the Ecofin and Social Affairs Councils and then by the European Council, thereby avoiding a dual approach to policy. These successive stages are as follows: 1) publication of the Commission communication on the "Broad Guidelines of the Economic Policies of the Member States" during the first half of 1995, containing a larger section on employment. This document will be used as the basis for the draft text by the Ecofin" Council, which will be discussed at the Cannes European summit in June 1995. During the second half of the year, the Commission will publish its 1995 annual report on employment, which will concentrate specifically on the 5 main areas for combating unemployment defined in Essen; 2 ) at the beginning of October each year and, most importantly, in 1995, a summary report on employment trends and changes to the employment systems in Europe will be presented and published and the European Parliament and the other institutions will express their opinion on it. This report will concentrate on progress made in creating jobs and reducing unemployment; 3 ) presentation of the final summary report taking account of the opinion of the European Parliament and the other institutions; 4 ) the Social Affairs and Ecofin Councils will be called on to give their opinion on this summary report, which will be presented in December 1995 to the European Council, which should then be in a position to assess the progress made in creating jobs at the end of one year of Community monitoring; 5 ) the Commission will also take account of comments by the social partners both at Member State and EC level.�