When the Amsterdam summit bumped the Luxembourgers into hosting a special November jobs summit during their presidency there were not a few sceptical eyebrows raised. Jobs, by common accord, are our number one priority here in Brussels and in the EU generally. Sure, don't we say so at every summit.
What we did not need, however, the Luxembourgers and others felt, was a talkshop which would reiterate the same worthy message of the need for structural reform without adding significantly to the sum of human knowledge or shortening a single dole queue.
Enter our own Padraig Flynn. The Irish Social Affairs Commissioner has turned a difficulty for the member-states into an opportunity for the Commission with a summit package he is due to unveil next Wednesday. It is likely to put the cat among the pigeons in national capitals.
Taking his lead from the example of Maastricht's monetary criteria, Mr Flynn will propose that member-states endorse over a dozen quantified targets for labour market reform. Aimed at increasing flexibility and hence competitiveness, these will range from educational and training targets for young and old - for example percentages of those on the dole being offered training - to specific levels of childcare provisions. It will certainly contain targets for the reduction in non-wage labour costs which, despite repeated commitments at summits, continue to rise. The full range and specific level of the targets, which he is determined will be "challenging", are currently being negotiated inside the Commission services, but Mr Flynn has made it clear the whole exercise is only worthwhile if "the bar is reasonably high". It is what the President of the Commission, Mr Jacques Santer, has called "social benchmarking".
Probably most galling to the member-states is likely to be the fact they will also be expected to accept that their progress towards these targets, although not legally binding, will be monitored closely on an annual basis by the Commission. It will also have the right to make recommendations should they appear to be falling behind. There's the rub. The Maastricht criteria were enforceable through the EU's excessive deficits procedure. These will have to rely on moral and political pressure, but Mr Flynn is willing to bet that domestic parliaments and public opinion are much more likely to embrace quantified employment rather than monetary criteria.
The problem of the EU's profile on fighting jobs is a longstanding one. Jacques Delors' White Paper on employment, whose philosophy has guided the EU since 1993, started from the premise that job creation was a matter for the member-states but pointed to structural weaknesses in the EU economies which have undermined the job-generating potential of growth. Over the last few years, Mr Flynn has worked on strengthening the monitoring of employment policies and persuaded memberstates to submit to the Commission multi-annual reports setting out their strategies on jobs. That monitoring role was again strengthened at the Amsterdam summit at the behest of the French and now, he believes, has the potential to have real teeth.
Mr Flynn's six-page guidelines paper identifies four key areas for action: entrepreneurship, employability, equal opportunities, and adaptability. Initiatives should range from completion of the internal market to greater access to venture capital and a reduction in bureaucratic rules.
He points particularly to huge demographic and technological changes and the mismatch between available skills and the requirements of the market. While half the unemployed have no occupational training, fewer than one in 10 are offered it while on the dole. Twenty per cent of the EU's young people leave education and training with no qualifications.
Yet 40 per cent of small and medium-sized businesses report the lack of adequate skills as an obstacle to recruitment. And Mr Flynn will seek commitments to real changes in social welfare systems to provide incentives to employability.
Improving access by women to the workforce will require the extension of child care and old-age care and the individualisation of taxation and social protection systems. The list goes on. . .
Adaptability also requires a "new partnership" between labour and employers, he argues. Mr Santer and Mr Flynn both insist that the synergy provided by getting the 15 to march in step can provide an added boost to national job creation efforts. If Mr Flynn can persuade members that genuinely challenging quantified targets can provide a real mechanism for doing that, then he may indeed have a legacy here of which he can be proud. This is his moment of truth.
