Employment in Europe. 1995 annual Report

OBJECTIVE: to present the main employment trends in Europe and propose best employment practices to the Member States based on experience acquired in the various countries which have improved their rate of job growth over recent months (7th Annual Report on Employment - 1995). CONTENT: while deploring the fact that some 18 million people are still unemployed in the Community (i.e. 11% of the Community's working population), the Commission report states that strong growth in employment is forecast for the next one or two years. However, it is unlikely that the number of unemployed will fall dramatically in the near future. Unemployment is still the main economic and social problem in the Union and the only real priority of the Member States at the present time. The report highlights the fact that, although the Member States all face the same problem, it varies considerably in size and nature from one country to another and from one region to another within the same country, as do the policies which need to be implemented. Because the problem of unemployment is approached differently, the Commission considers that changes in employment in each Member State need to be examined separately. At the same time, because the problem of unemployment varies in nature, a wide variety of results have been achieved. This variety represents an important fund of information which the Member States can dip into in order to find best practices which may be applicable in their own country. This is the main objective of the report, i.e. to establish a common fund of information by setting out recent changes in employment and unemployment and the measures introduced as a result. The report is divided into 3 sections: . the first section deals with recent changes in employment and unemployment in the Union: it sets out the most recent developments on the labour market in each Member State in order to determine the extent to which they have achieved their employment objectives; . the second section addresses the question of re-employment as a Union strategy: the report examines the various measures used recently to attack the problems of employment and unemployment. The Commission identifies 5 main areas of action as being of major importance in resolving the employment problem in the Member States: - improving the employment potential of the working population by encouraging investment in vocational training; - increasing the job intensity of economic growth; - reducing non-wage costs in order to stimulate job creation, especially for those with few qualifications; - improving the efficiency of labour market measures; - improving measures to assist the groups hardest hit by unemployment; . the third section includes a detailed analysis of 2 questions which the Council singled out by the Council as being of particular importance: - the relation between employment, social protection systems and labour costs; - job creation in activities linked to environmental protection.�