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.