EU summit ends with concrete steps to boost employment

PRAGUE, May 7 (Xinhua) -- European Union (EU) leaders and representatives from European labor unions and employers' organizations wrapped up here their one-day employment summit on Thursday after agreeing 10 concrete steps to protect and boost employment amid the global financial crisis.

After more than two hours of discussion, they agreed the actions including plans to keep as more people as possible in employment through temporary working hours adjustment, lowering non-wage labor costs and improving the efficiency of national employment services.

The 10 proposals serve the basis for the measures expected to be approved by EU employment ministers and EU leaders in June.

The 10 actions will be implemented at national and European level with the cooperation with social partners.

With unemployment in the 27-nation bloc forecast to rise to nearly 10 percent this year, the EU needs effective instruments to tackle the problem, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek told a press conference after the summit. His country holds the current EU presidency.

He urged for structural reforms "which in the future could help limit the impact of the crisis and would contribute on the creation of jobs."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that the EU has put employment as the objective No.1.

"With this employment summit we are telling our citizens that we want their employment to be Europe's objective number one," he said at the press conference.

"We all know, we must succeed on employment because there can be no economic recovery on the foundations of social collapse, just as there can be no social progress in an economic desert," he said.

Barroso said the employment summit "increases strongly the chances that we will succeed and this summit generated concrete ideas. They can in particular give hope to young people facing the daunting prospect of finding their first job."

Participants of the meeting also called for cooperation and coordination in enhancing jobs between the EU, governments of member states, and social partnerships, such the trade unions and businesses.

Barroso described the summit as "a significant step towards more and better coordinated action on employment."

"Europe is not only an economic and political project, it has always been and will always be a social project as well," he stressed.

They also discussed anti-protectionism at the summit.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, which is to take over the EU presidency in June, stressed that protectionism is "never the solution" if the EU is going to achieve long-term recovery of the labor market.

"We have to preserve free trade and competition. These are very important to our economy," he said.

Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, president of Business Europe, said that "anything smells of protectionism" must be fought back urgently.

Spanish Employment Minister Celestino Corbacho urged EU governments to encourage continuous training of workers and promote inclusive labor markets.

"Only on the basis of coordination and social dialogue can we achieve our intention of coming out of this crisis with a more competitive, innovative, more sustainable and fairer economy," he said.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, will build on the summit's discussions while formulating proposals to be submitted to the EU summit in June.