Spaanse minister bespreekt EU 2020 strategie met EP en nationale parlementen (en)

Met dank overgenomen van Spaans voorzitterschap Europese Unie 1e helft 2010 i, gepubliceerd op donderdag 24 juni 2010.

The Spanish Minister for Employment and Immigration, Celestino Corbacho. EFE

The European Union must promote training to improve competitiveness and move towards a sustainable and innovative economy, according to the Minister for Employment and Immigration, Celestino Corbacho, in her speech to EU representatives in the Congress of Deputies this Thursday.

Corbacho affirmed that “we are all going to come out of this crisis together, Spain included. But we must learn from the crisis not to repeat any of the mistakes we made in the past”.

“We want to move towards a sustainable, more innovative economy. An economy that sets its productivity and competitiveness, not on the basis of short term profits, but on profits that are sustainable over time”, she said. But in order to achieve this, she added that it is necessary to "promote training to generate competitiveness, without giving up on one of our signs of identity, which is social cohesion".

In her speech during the Meeting of the Presidents of the Employment and Immigration Commissions of the European Parliament and of the National Parliaments of the EU, the minister summarised the six months of the Spanish Presidency of the EU in the sphere of their responsibilities.

Corbacho highlighted the 26 events related to employment and social protection closely linked to the 2020 Strategy: the two informal meetings of Ministers - the informal meeting of Employment ministers held in Barcelona at the end of January 2010 and the Meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Toledo of the top European heads of Justice, the Interior and Immigration -, five ministerial conferences, seventeen technical meetings and working groups, and also two international global events.

2020 Strategy

The meeting held in the Congress addressed the recently approved European 2020 Strategy, which is one of the key elements for the future of the Union, according to Corbacho.

“From the Spanish Ministry of Employment we have been working very hard to encourage more appreciation of its possibilities, limitations and potential, working to involve the greatest possible number of actors so that the Strategy has the maximum possible support and legitimacy", she said.

Corbacho highlighted the five objectives of the Strategy that address "the will to put growth and employment creation at the centre of our strategies for coming out of the crisis, in order to make Europe a competitive knowledge-based economy and retain the European social model".

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    Ensuring that 75% of the population between 20 and 64 years of age has employment in the year 2020, "an important objective that we must work to make possible from this moment in time, and we will have to work hard”.
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    Investment in R&D and innovation of 3% of the GDP of the EU, as "the future to come must be driven by innovation, by research, by qualifications, by new occupations and new jobs”.
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    Reducing the percentage of school dropouts, "to make the economy more competitive”.
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    Energy saving.
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    Reducing the number of people at risk of poverty by 20 million.

Reducing poverty

The 2020 Strategy has positively included reducing poverty among its objectives. “This would have been a lame duck Strategy if it had not included the objective of reducing the number of people at risk of poverty by 20 million", he added.

The importance of the economy is clear, “but we cannot allow ourselves not to look at the risks of poverty, often of children, which is sometimes present in our society", he concluded.