An EU summit aim: More jobs must become better jobs

Mar 13, 2008, 16:57 GMT

Brussels - Low wages, rising prices: the European Union summit in Brussels is trying to answer the worries of millions of Europeans by aiming at 'better jobs.'

'Better jobs are jobs that are first of all better paid,' said EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Yet in the face of a threatened poverty trap, the goals and the reality of the European Union are still separated by a wide margin.

This Barroso knows. The EU head has demanded that the 27 EU states invest more in education and training, because no one should be excluded from the job market through lack of knowledge or skills.

'We cannot create a competitive Europe if we leave some citizens on the margins,' said Barroso, whose native Portugal is home to an especially large number of failed schoolchildren. The EU summit is indirectly acknowledging these failures.

The member states would have to act concretely in order to lower the number of young people with reading difficulties and school dropouts, the heads of state and government said a pre-agreed advanced statement.

These calls are not new. But they have risen again because nothing has been done. In mid-February experts in the EU noted that the portion of schoolchildren lagging in reading skills EU-wide rose from 21.3 per cent of all 15-year-olds in 2000 to 24.1 per cent in 2006.

Similar is the battle against poverty and social exclusion. This is of 'great importance,' says the summit document. Though the problem is known, it has not been averted.

According to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the situation is becoming worse: 17 million workers in the EU already live in poverty, 31 million work for starvation wages.

Secure work places are disappearing. In their place, the ETUC complains, are coming low-wage jobs with time limits.

'More work in order to earn more,' is the mantra proffered to workers by the next EU president, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy himself has refused to participate in the so-called social summit in which current and future EU presidencies have held talks with employers and unions preceeding the EU summit.

But instead of more work, workers representatives have demanded a greater share of the rising corporate profits. Better jobs are needed any way, they say.

Therefore they are meeting with the summit bigwigs, albeit using a different vocabulary: the heads of state and government speak of 'human capital,' which they say is needed in order that tax receipts continue to climb and Europe can stay economic competitive.

More 'flexicurity' is demanded by business leader Ernest-Antoine Seilliere: 'It is about essentially improving the employability of workers.'

And this is the real goal of the EU summit: that the European economy should boom even in the future. Therefore, the summit is urging - one more time - solid education and further education, greater mobility by workers and a better union of work and family.

Thus advances have to wait on where national leaders can redirect their energies. The summit document has stressed an old goal of research and development on the lines of the so-called Lisbon Treaty, in which the EU is to use 3 per cent of gross domestic product for this purpose.

The European Statistics Office however announced Monday the sobering reality: For years, Europe's research spending has been bumbling along at around 1.84 per cent of GDP.