Council Decision (EU) 2015/1848 of 5 October 2015 on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States for 2015

What it is

to adopt the guidelines for the employment policies for 2015 . ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Council may adopt the act only if Parliament has given its consent to the act. BACKGROUND: the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides that Member States are to regard their economic policies and promoting employment as a matter of common concern and shall coordinate their action within the Council. In two distinct articles, it provides that the Council is to adopt broad economic policy guidelines (Article 121) and employment guidelines (Article 148), specifying that the latter must be consistent with the former. Given this legal basis, the guidelines for employment and economic policies are presented as two distinct – but intrinsically interconnected – legal instruments: The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs adopted the report by Laura AGEA (EFDD, IT) on the proposal for a Council decision on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States. Recalling that the Member States and the Union should work towards developing an effective and coordinated strategy for employment, designed to counter the serious effects of unemployment , the committee approved the Commission proposal subject to amendments as follows: revenue should be protected for adequate social protection and expenditures directed towards public investment, innovation and job creation; the tax burden should be shifted away from labour to other sources of taxation that are less detrimental to employment. Reductions in labour taxation should be aimed tackling discrimination and at removing barriers to labour market participation, in particular for people with disabilities, while respecting existing labour standards; policies to ensure that wages allow an adequate living income remain important to create employment and decrease poverty in the Union; Member States should cut red tape in order to ease the burden on small and medium-sized enterprises, as they contribute significantly to job creation. Member States should promote sustainable productivity and quality employability through an appropriate supply of relevant knowledge and skills made available and accessible to all . There should be particular focus on health care, social services and transport services; "soft skills" such as communication are becoming more important for a large number of occupations and should be taken into account; Member States should: (i) promote entrepreneurship among young people; (ii) step up efforts to prevent young people from dropping out of school and to ensure a smoother transition from education and training to professional life to improve access and remove barriers to high-quality adult learning for all by offering retraining of skills when job losses and changes in the labour market necessitate active reintegration; (iii) implement active ageing strategies to enable healthy working up to the real retirement age; while supporting education and training alongside programmes for adult learning, Member States should take into account that low-skills jobs are also needed and that employment opportunities are better for the high-skilled than for the medium-…

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