'Flexicurity' key to future of EU, social experts tell forum
Khaled Diab
May 2002
Speaking at
the launch of a new study by the World Bank and the Bertelsmann Foundation,
experts from the EU and candidate countries said that European governments
should engage citizens in the process of reinventing their approach to the
labour market and social issues in order to ease the fears of their people and
counteract the rising voice of the extreme right.
“We should create some kind of flexicurity model: this means flexibility
after social dialogue,” Poland’s ex-Labour Minister Michal Boni, co-author of Labour,
employment and social policies in the EU enlargement process, told the
forum organised by the European Policy Centre.
Boni also argued that promoting labour mobility was
essential, not only in candidate countries, but across the EU to ensure the
proper matching of skills and people to enhance the competitiveness of the
European economy.
Rita Suessmuth, former leader of the German Bundestag
and also a co-author of the book, suggested that current EU members had to
overcome their fears of being overrun by cheap labour and recognise the
benefits of migration as a dynamo for economic growth and a catalyst for the
prosperity necessary to sustain the social security system.
“We have to have a minimum of coordination in Europe and to admit that
migration is more of an added value than a burden,” Suessmuth noted.
The German academic also suggested that governments
abandon addressing issues of migration and employment on a national level and
work, through dialogue with their citizens, towards promoting a pan-European
approach to these common challenges, which protects workers against the
vulnerabilities of a flexible labour policy.
The experts also recommended higher investment in
education and retraining to meet the employment shortage in the knowledge
sector in both member and candidate countries. In addition, Boni suggested
reduced working hours, job-sharing, telecommuting and investment in the social
sector to counteract technological displacement in the slowing manufacturing
and services sector.
This article appeared in the 2 May 2002 issue
of European Voice. ©2002 The Economist
Group
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