EURACTIV organises debate on innovative labour reforms

Hans Martens, executive director of the European Policy Centre, argued that the choice of macro economic tools had been strongly limited since the introduction of the euro, that has put monetary policy in the hands of the ECB and fiscal policy into the straightjacket of the growth and stability pact. This leaves governments with the hard choice of carrying out unpopular reforms in the name of Lisbon, but whose positive result will often only appear after the next elections. On creating jobs he said that the real challenge was making the little 'mum and dad' companies grow into bigger companies.

Maja Wessels, Vice President of Honeywell, expressed her amazement at the protests from the French youth. "There seems to be a very strong risk aversion. If you are this afraid of losing your steady job at so young an age, then there is something wrong," she said, arguing that risk-taking is something that can be learned from family or in school."Having a job is not a right. It is something you have to earn," Wessels said underlining that there is no easy way out and that even if the Lisbon goals will not be met by 2010, the most important thing is to get started with the reforms now.

Maria Joao Rodrigues, special adviser to the Commission, said there was a need for more flexibility. She argued that social protection should not be seen as a safety net, but as a springboard to a new job. She proposed introduction of a so-called 'time saving account' with a 'life course' approach - i.e. that  citizens should be able to keep a credit of social benefits to be used over their lifetime. 

Jakob von Weizsäcker of the Bruegel think tank pointed to the problem of keeping the older segment of the workforce in jobs, because wages tend to go up while productivity tends to go down. Once made redundant, what often happens then is that early retirement schemes take over at the expense of the general public. But depending on health and education the profile of the 65 year old can vary greatly, and as a group they are much more diverse than other groups on the labour market. Creativity and energy is lost in this way. Thus, von Weizäcker argued, that every person should be given a 'pension right account' that allow to save up rights. This would provide greater flexibility and motivation for them to use the option of returning to the labour market, 'un-retiring', at an older age after some years in retirement. 

Giorgio Clarotti, policy officer  of Commission's DG Research pointed to the inherent problems in  company accounting methods that will always put people - the biggest asset in a knowledge based economy - as a cost instead of treating it as an investment.  

Diana Filip of JA-YE, Junior Achievement Young Enterprise, spoke of the need to get rid of the fear of failure that stop many from starting a business and changing the mind sets of people, taking inspiration from the USA. 

Domenico Lenarduzzi, the inventor of the Erasmus student exchange programme, observed that people who have once spent time abroad as students are more likely to be mobile in their later life and careers.

Emmanuel Jahan, responsible for human resources at Air France-KLM, observed that mobility in EU is hampered by the risk of fully or partly losing pension rights, when a worker settles in another country.    

Jacques de Selliers, General Manager of Green Facts and Pendo Maro of the EEB  both supported the idea shifting taxes from labour to natural resources use.

During the European Business Summit in Brussels, 16-17 March, EURACTIV organised a debating session on labour market reforms titled "Socio-economic reforms: solutions…?”. 

The debate was moderated by Euractiv's editor-in-chief Willy De Backer. Panelists were Hans Martens, executive director of the European Policy Centre, Maja Wessels, Vice President of Honeywell, Maria Joao Rodrigues, special adviser to the Commission on labour market reforms and Jakob von Weizsäcker, research fellow at the think tank, Bruegel. 

NGOs and Think-Tanks

• Bruegel:Last exit to Lisbon
• EPC:The Nordic model: a recipe for European success?
• JA-YE, Junioir Achievment Young EnterpriseJA-YE and European Business Summit 2006