The growing job shortage forces a change in the European social discourse
(B2) In a European context where unemployment still exceeds 10% in several countries, the shortage of jobs becomes just as worrying a social issue. It is watching not only certain geographical areas - in northern Europe in particular - but also almost everywhere certain professional sectors. Construction, certain technologies, health or the social sector are seriously affected in almost all European countries, including Eastern and Southern Europe. Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, for example, are seriously affected, both by the decline in vocations and the departure of their professionals to other, more pleasant countries, because they offer working conditions and salaries more importantly, threatening the sustainability and quality of its services. Shouldn't the main priority of the document that Commissioner Kyprianou is preparing on Health Services be this?
European political priorities conceal solutions that belong to the past
The causes are diverse but are often common: unattractiveness of certain particularly difficult professions, lack of training or schools available, numerus clausus, conditions of remuneration or difficult hours. The priorities of European employment policy risk being upset. If the importance of vocational training, initial or throughout life, still needs to be reinforced, other issues are on the negotiating table. A sensitive point, particularly in the New Member States, which support the idea of a compensation fund. Shouldn't other instruments of intra-European solidarity be studied?
Studying new solidarity instruments
Because certain policies advocated at European level, such as greater flexibility or mobility of workers, if they come to solve problems in certain countries suffering from shortages, can also, at the same time, have perverse and destabilizing effects in the poorest countries where salaries are the lowest. Similarly, will the search for a new balance of flexicurity really be effective only if the “security” component comes before or takes precedence over the “flexibility” component which already exists on the current labor market? The strengthening of legislation on working time or temporary work thus regains a clear economic interest.
The risk of pressure on wages should not be neglected either, even if its consequences at the macroeconomic level, on inflation, are difficult to assess. This tension is already visible for certain professions (the case of construction workers or bus drivers is obvious in Poland, according to certain information). Admittedly, it has a positive effect for the employees concerned, and is slowly helping to erase the excessive wage differences in Europe. But it also introduces disparities within each country, which are all the greater insofar as significant “pockets” of poverty remain.
Refocus on social inclusion and integration
Social inclusion policies, which have become more of an academic antiphon at European level than a concrete political priority, must regain new vigor, as must the policy of integrating foreigners. Recourse to new, even massive immigration can only be resolved and understood by public opinion if it is accompanied by strong support – financial, political, material – for integration “old” immigrants than “new” ones. Some politicians have understood this, notably at the European Commission with Franco Frattini and Vladimir Spidla. But the message does not yet really penetrate into opinions, confirmed for years, in the belief in the dangers of immigration, and to whom we have regularly repeated that
option "0" was the only correct one.
(NGV)
