EU Employment Week: Going local

The Swedish model could serve as a blueprint for a new growth strategy, starting from the bottom up, suggests Malmö's mayor Kent Andersson.

Europe’s cities whole-heartedly welcome the European commission’s commitment to revitalise and strengthen the implementation of the Lisbon and Gothenburg strategies.

We are convinced that the revision is a necessary condition for successful defence and development of the European model, maintaining a holistic approach on employment, social inclusion and the environment.

Europe’s success emphasises that there is no contradiction between economic and social progress.

But there is still an urgent need to focus on the social dimension. This is illustrated not least by the fact that 25 per cent of the estimated 70 million people in Europe living in poverty actually have jobs.

In my opinion, the cities are the key to a successful implementation of the growth and jobs strategy.

Europe must recognise that a vast majority of its citizens live in cities – in fact its cities and urban areas hold 75 per cent of its population and provide about 80 per cent of its economic output.

The objective to make a decisive impact on poverty and social exclusion by 2010 and allow all of its citizens to benefit from

Europe’s success will not be achieved if local and regional governments are not more closely involved.

National authorities must be prepared to treat their local and regional counterparts as equals in the political process, promoting participation in decision-making.

In March 2005 the member states agreed to draw up their Lisbon national reform programmes in consultation with all local and regional stakeholders.

But many Eurocities members were not invited to take part in the process of preparing and developing the first round of NRPs.

Eurocities is therefore calling on member states to recognize cities as strategic partners in the implementation of the NRPs and in the preparation of the next round of reform programmes.

In order to strengthen the local and regional dimension, we also propose the development of ‘metropolitan action plans’ within the framework of an expanded open method of coordination, the forum for member states to share best practice.

The Swedish metropolitan initiative could serve as a model for ensuring the participation of local and regional stakeholders.

Faced with increasing economic, social, ethnic and gender discrimination in the country’s three major metropolitan regions, the Swedish government developed a method that made it possible to apply different labour market strategies in the three areas.

The government entered into formal contracts, so called ‘local development agreements’, with seven municipalities within the three metropolitan areas.

The municipalities were also given the possibility to develop other partnerships between, for example, their employment offices and the national labour board’s regional and local organisations.

Although the Lisbon reform process is becoming increasingly similar across all 25 member states, the demands of Europe’s local areas are becoming increasingly diverse.

This means that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is becoming increasingly useless in tackling these demands. In many ways, these diverging realities mirror Europe’s employment challenges.

The ability of the higher education system to meet future economic trends and produce a competent labour force is one
example.

As the differences in educational backgrounds between people in the same city, region and state increase due to immigration and intra-state relocation, there is a need for better techniques to improve knowledge and skills.

The differences in economic structure between the member states, and between regions within the same state, constitute another challenge.

With structural reforms and the efforts to reach sustainable economic growth comes the need for new knowledge and for higher levels of education.

This does not necessarily mean spending more time in education; it can also mean looking at different forms of education.

Yet another challenge is the creation a truly inclusive labour market, reducing the number of people unemployed and/or living in poverty and protecting legal as well as illegal workers from exploitation.

This is closely connected to the prevention and elimination of clandestine work and thus to immigration issues.

But there is a risk that these differences might result in increased tension between the local and the national level if the implementation of strategies is not handled carefully.

In order to ensure a successful implementation, it is important to find ways to strengthen local processes without governing them.

The key lesson from the Swedish metropolitan initiative was that time is a crucial factor in this work.

It is now time to start real consultation and to build real strategies for boosting jobs, starting with at the local level.

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