EU summit: Commitments for change

José Manuel Barroso outlines the commitments he will ask from EU leaders at the spring summit.

Europe’s leaders meet at this week's spring summit to boost growth and jobs in Europe. The summit cannot create those jobs itself. But it can help get the conditions right for businesses to do so.

The positive message the European commission is taking to the summit is that if we manage change, we can take the opportunities offered by globalisation and meet the challenges it presents.

Above all, it is a message of confidence in the talents of Europeans and in the flair of European business.

But the potential of our citizens and businesses needs to be unleashed. At the moment it is still constrained by lack of opportunity, by lack of investment in the right areas and by red tape.

The commission wants EU leaders to take bold decisions. This cannot be just another summit, forgotten as soon as the TV gantries have been dismantled. The best remedy for social exclusion is jobs.

Unemployment feeds social problems, crime and political extremism. Young people suffer disproportionately from unemployment.

The commission is asking European leaders to make a commitment that anyone leaving education will be offered a job or training within six months of becoming unemployed. If governments work closely with business, this is achievable.

The current nine per cent unemployment rate across the EU covers only registered job-seekers.

There are many others who would like to work. Only 63 per cent of our working age population is in employment. The agreed target is 70 per cent by 2010.

If we are to encourage people into the labour market we need affordable childcare. We need to turn lifelong learning from a buzzword into a habit, including for older workers.

We need true gender equality and a better work-life balance. Tax and benefit systems must also provide the right incentives. Member states have taken these issues seriously in their national reform programmes.

But the commission is asking them to do more. Because, on current trends, by 2050 there will be only two people working in the EU for every retired senior citizen.

If we don’t get more people into jobs, financing pensions and healthcare will become increasingly difficult.

Business has a role, too. Companies must have the vision to invest in childcare and training and to allow employees time off at times in their lives when they need it.

There may be a short-term cost, but in the end the bottom line will be the better for it. Businesses, like individuals, need the right encouragement to broaden their horizons and to grow.

There has been some recent progress at European level on making that easier. The services directive as adopted by the European parliament is a step forward.

It will tackle many of the barriers that mean a business one kilometre from a border can often provide services 1000 kilometres away at the other end of its member state but not two kilometres away across the border.

At the same time, the EU’s financial services action plan will give businesses better and cheaper access to the capital that is their lifeblood.

But much more is needed. How many one person enterprises and small businesses have been strangled at birth because in some member states, setting up a new business takes months and costs thousands of euros?

 The commission is calling on member states initially to halve start-up times and later to reduce them to less than a week, as well as to provide “one-stop shops” for dealing with administrative requirements.

The commission is also asking the summit to take decisions to keep Europe at the technological cutting-edge.

To agree to raise investment in higher education from 1.28 to two per cent of GDP. To set ambitious targets for investment in research and development.

To set up a European Institute of Technology to bring together our best brains and companies and help turn R&D into commercial opportunities and jobs.

On energy issues, the commission has a blunt message. Europe needs to buy, produce and use energy more efficiently and more cleanly, for four main reasons.

First, we need security of supply so that our economies can keep working.

Second, supplies of oil, coal and gas are not infinite. We need to draw more on alternative, renewable sources.

Third, the cost of energy is passed on to the consumer in higher prices for all goods and services.

So we need to keep costs down. Last, and emphatically not least, we must reduce the impact of our energy use on the environment.

 These goals are interlinked. Progress towards one of them is often progress towards the others.

That is why we need the vision to abandon illusory notions of “economic nationalism” and to create a strong European internal energy market and a coherent European energy policy.

When I announced the commission’s green paper on energy earlier this month I asked a rhetorical question: “Do we or do we not have the political will to forge a European common strategy on energy?”

I will ask the same simple question at the summit, but it will not be rhetorical. Stakeholders and citizens need an answer from their political leaders.

The right answer on that and on the commission’s concrete and realistic proposals for jobs will mean a more prosperous, fairer and cleaner Europe better equipped to turn globalisation to its advantage and with the economic clout to put into practice the values of solidarity that Europeans hold dear.

This article originally appeared in the March20 edition of the Parliament Magazine.

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