Results of the Employment Summit

Key points

In response to a letter of 13 March from Mr Barroso, the President of the European Commission, the EESC sets out the following recommendations to overcome the current labour market crisis:

• restoring consumer and investor confidence by ensuring and encouraging private and public-sector demand;
• using publicly subsidised active employment policy instruments to enable employees to stay at work while training;

• avoiding income cuts as far as possible and promoting equality of opportunity, paying attention to inequalities and ensuring greater security on labour markets;
• ensuring public investment through a provisional, flexible approach to the Stability Pact and expanding the tax revenue base in Member States;
• increasing the supply of European funding, facilitating access to European Structural Funds, acting swiftly to improve the Globalisation Fund;
• progressing with socially equitable structural reforms, upgrading skills, matching labour market needs more effectively, improving mobility and boosting entrepreneurship.
• Social partners and other representatives of organised civil society must play a key role in tackling the crisis.