Global Europe: full-employment Europe
13 October 2005
“Global Europe: full-employment Europe” sets out proposals for major reforms to enable Europe to grow faster and tackle unemployment in the face of rapid global economic change, including the rapid rise of Asian markets. The paper highlights that Europe is losing ground on its global competitors in growth, labour markets, skills, innovation and enterprise; and calls for action in three areas to create a Global Europe that becomes more competitive as the route to delivering full employment:
(1) Boosting productivity and competition: speeding up the process of completing the Single Market in key sectors; opening up the market for services; eliminating untargeted and distortive state aids that prevent full and fair competition; implementing pro-active competition policies; and a sustained commitment to regulatory reform.
(2) Skills and Employability: the development of modern social and labour market policies to help those without work find new jobs; childcare to help parents overcome barriers to work; reform of tax and benefits to make work pay; and national education and skills policies that equip people to adapt to change work in new areas of comparative advantage.
(3) Openness: Europe to take a leading role in the forthcoming Hong Kong trade talks and beyond to reject protectionism and to press for the conclusion of an ambitious trade deal that will completely open markets to exports from poorer countries.
“Global Europe: full-employment Europe” is available below in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website . For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.
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