EU Employment Week: Breaking down the walls

Employment Week is the perfect time to highlight the benefits – and the pitfalls – of the EU labour market, says commissioner Vladimír Špidla.

When EU employment commissioner Vladimír Špidla launched the European year of workers’ mobility back in February, he faced a barrage of difficult questions from journalists.

How, they asked, could he give his backing to a campaign designed to highlight the benefits of the single EU labour market when such a thing patently did not exist?

Špidla, whose Czech compatriots were at the time prevented from working in all but three western EU member states, admitted that there were still major obstacles to be overcome but that it was important to focus on the advantages that were already there to be taken.

Three months later, the commissioner’s message remains essentially the same. Even though Greece, Finland, Spain and Portugal have joined Ireland, Sweden and the UK in relaxing restrictions on workers from the new EU, complete freedom of movement for workers remains an elusive goal but one that is nonetheless worth the effort.

“The situation is changing,” Špidla says. “The number of countries with no restrictions on workers from the eight central and eastern European member states grew on May 1 to seven, but almost every member state has relaxed the restrictions, even if they have not lifted them.”

He highlights the situation in Italy, which had imposed quotas on the numbers of new EU workers following the May 2004 enlargement.

“Italy’s quota has now doubled to more than 170,000 – but there have only been around 50,000 workers moving there over the last two years anyway, so in reality there are no restrictions on working there".

"Clearly, restrictions do remain, in Germany and Austria in particular, but they are flexible, and I think the situation will continue to improve.”

The Czech commissioner sees nothing wrong in using events like the year of workers’ mobility or Employment Week to talk about the negative aspects of the EU’s single labour market – in fact, he believes they are the perfect platform for such a debate.

“This is why we made 2006 the year of workers’ mobility – to highlight the issues, to generate understanding of what needs to be done to remove the barriers to worker mobility and then to make sure they are removed.”

“Employment Week will do the same thing – increase the general understanding that, even if there are many obstacles to be overcome, there is such a thing as an EU labour market”.

“Of course, we know there are barriers, and even if some of them are more bureaucratic than physical, when they are combined it makes life complicated. There is a lot that needs to be done, but the work is already underway.”

Špidla highlights a number of measures that are already making life easier for workers wanting to take advantage of the growing EU labour market, such as the harmonised rules on health and safety, discrimination, working conditions and the mutual recognition of qualifications.

But he recognises that there is much still to be done even in these areas to ensure that the single labour market works properly.

“The fight against discrimination is interesting, for example. EU rules already exist in this field, but the implementation by the member states is not always correct, and the commission has the role of defending the legislation".

"It is a huge task – sometimes we achieve results through cooperation with the member states, sometimes we have to resort to legal action to ensure the correct and efficient implementation of EU rules. It is a big problem and one that will not be solved quickly.”

Špidla believes that this new willingness on the part of the commission to put a bit of stick about if member states fail to implement rules correctly – coupled with expected agreements on a number of other key employment issues – will begin to improve the lot of migrant workers.

“We have clarified how rules on the posting of workers must be implemented, we are preparing a green paper on labour law in the EU that will help improve job security within the EU.

We are making progress on new rules on working time, we are progressing on the issue of portability of pensions, we have relaunched the Eures job search portal with more than one million jobs, we are beginning work on patient mobility – all of these initiatives will take us a major step forward.”

But there is one key area that still needs a lot of work, according to Špidla.

“We need to improve European education levels if we want to be able to create jobs. Europe is capable of producing some of the most advanced technology in the world – look at the Ariane rocket or the TGV – so it is clear that our education levels are not exactly poor”.

“But we need to improve, to change, because the world is changing. If we decide to rest on our laurels, then we will fail.

"In the middle ages, it took two or three generations for our understanding of the world to change; after the industrial revolution, it took less than a generation. Nowadays, what we know about the world can change several times within a lifetime.”

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