Creating growth and jobs
If globalisation hits their jobs, the EU can help them to retrain.
The EU’s strategy for creating growth and jobs in a sustainable manner, known as the Lisbon Strategy, promotes innovation within businesses and investment in people to create a knowledge-based society. The focus is on lifelong learning and promoting research and development.
The strategy also seeks to attract more people into employment, keeping them in work longer as life expectancy rises, improving the adaptability of workers and enterprises, providing better education and skills and adapting social protection systems to the challenges of innovation, globalisation and mobility. The new approach must combine flexibility and mobility in labour markets with robust social security safety nets, a concept known as 'flexicurity'.
The Lisbon Strategy took on a new importance when an economic crisis hit Europe in 2008. If adhered to, it will help recovery by boosting demand and restoring confidence in the European economy. The EU has also devised measures addressing the short-term employment impact of the economic crisis and improving the long-term job prospects of the EU workforce by better matching jobs to vacancies and by anticipating labour market needs. For example, if there is a current surplus of textile workers but a foreseeable shortage in the tourist industry, textile workers could be retrained.
Preserving workers’ rights and social protection
The drive for more and better jobs is not at any cost, however. The Union’s long tradition of ensuring a decent working environment throughout the EU and of protecting workers' rights continues to hold good. Common standards for all cover minimum rules on working conditions, collective redundancy, part-time and temporary work, health and safety at work, maternity and parental leave, equal pay for equal work, and protection against sexual harassment.
Social dialogue between worker representatives and employers is also a cornerstone of EU policy. Sound labour relations strengthen worker protection, while at the same time contributing to competitiveness. In addition, the European Commission encourages corporate social responsibility, which requires companies to take social and environmental concerns into account when doing business.
The EU has also advanced social welfare systems and there is no question of jettisoning these, although safety nets should not be a disincentive to work. EU leaders have also agreed that pensions and quality health care are basic rights, though the cost must be sustainable. The challenge of adapting social protection to a modern economy is especially pertinent during an economic downturn, when a relatively large number of people are facing the prospect of redundancy and dependency on welfare.
Equal opportunities
Equal opportunities for all are a basic tenet of EU policy. Across the EU, common legislation outlaws discrimination on the basis of gender, racial or ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief. The EU has specific strategies for combating discrimination and xenophobia and for promoting social inclusion.
Investing in people
Investing in people is crucial to the jobs and growth strategy. The European Social Fund is the main instrument here, spending €77 billion between 2007 and 2013 to improve access to employment, increase the adaptability of workers and enterprises and develop institutional capacity in disadvantaged regions. The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund has €500m available annually to provide personalised support to workers made redundant as a result of global trade liberalisation and increased competition. The Fund will also be used to help workers who have lost their jobs due to the financial crisis to retrain and find new employment.
The right to mobility
One of the Union’s major achievements has been to ensure that the right of its citizens to live and work anywhere in the EU carries with it the entitlement to social benefits, including healthcare. The EU encourages worker mobility for the benefits it brings to the individual in terms of personal and career development and as a means to match skills to demand. To make job mobility easier, the public employment services of all EU countries advertise job vacancies through the EURES website, a one-stop-shop where more than a million vacancies are advertised.
