Story from EUbusiness

The European Commission today agreed new measures to open up pan-European labour markets by 2005. The strategy to remove barriers to mobility and to raise the skill levels of Europe’s workforce involves a two-stage approach.
The first stage would concentrate on tackling obvious major obstacles to new European labour markets. This includes: obtaining Europe-wide recognition for key job skills; removing barriers to mobility presented by social security and pension systems; and providing simple access to information about jobs and training available throughout Europe.

The second stage would establish a high-level business task force to look at skills and mobility problems in more depth – in particular the skills gap in the IT and communications sectors.

Following publication of the task force report, the Commission said it would then put forward an action plan with further initiatives – to provide everyone with access to “genuine European labour markets by 2005”. The Commission is looking to the Stockholm European Council to endorse this strategy.

“New pan European labour markets are emerging, driven by technological change and globalisation, but they face many barriers. We want to remove those barriers by 2005 – to make these European labour markets open to all, with access for all,” said EU Employment Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou.

She added that this was an opportunity for individuals and for business: “The chance to work in another member state has been a right since the Treaty of Rome. Today we agreed to turn that right into a reality for all Europe’s citizens.”