| The closing years of the twentieth century set important challenges before European Socialists and Social Democrats. Not only are there many problems in Europe, but these come at a key moment when Europe is at an interesting point with regard to its future. |
| There is still much that is needed to be done in Europe. Much more needs to be done to tackle unemployment and poverty. We have to work harder to improve economic and social conditions so that we can improve the quality of life of our citizens and prevent the re-emergence of racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism. We must continue to build our comunities and to increase solidarity between our peoples. We must close the gap between citizens and governments. We must strengthen our comitment to preventing violent conflicts amongst our neighbours. And we must seize the opportunities offered to the Union by the prospect of further deepening, reform and enlargement. |
| Progress in the construction of political Europe is a necessary condition for a positive solution to the challenges we face. In the face of these challenges, continuity and routine are not an option. We need to develop European policies which are elements for innovation in our national policies. |
| The PES has, in its manifesto for the last European elections in 1994, set out its programme for the coming years. On this basis these are our objectives in Europe |
| Work and prosperity a fully active society, efficient and secure, without unemployment or poverty, |
| Real equal opportunities for women and men, |
| A balanced model of economic, social and ecological quality of the environment and of life, |
| Solidarity between people, countries and generations, |
| Progress in the deepening, reform and enlargement of the EU, increasing democracy and transparency, |
| A comon foreign policy for security and cooperation, as a contribution to world-wide peace and development. |
| In order to realise these objectives we developed our party, the PES, which allows European Socialists, Social Democrats and Labour members, in their rich diversity, to act with one voice, with common proposals and a growing unity of initiatives. |
| We do not accept unemployment as a fate. Job creation should be a priority of economic policy. |
| There are possibilities, which have not been used, to stimulate an active, concerted economic policy at European level. By overcoming the limitations of our national economies and using the real potential of the comon European economy it is possible to free enormous possibilities for growth. A concerted initiative of macro-economic policies at European level could guarantee a stable and sustained growth, a tendancy which needs to be maintained in the creation of employment. |
| It is necessary to stimulate active employment policies so as not to allow the unemployed to fall into the trap of social exclusion and remain outside the productive system. This implies helping firms to employ the unemployed and coordinating with them to implement training programmes. Investing in knowledge should be a priority objective. The unemployed should have effective possibilities in their search for work, updating their skills, temporary employment and human resource activities in the local comunity. |
| Investment and employment in the private sector are priority objectives, which should be promoted by means of public investment in research and development, infrastructure, housing and environmental management, in order to guarantee adeguate levels of competitivity in the long term. |
| We must draw up a new social contract in Europe, between unions and employers, with the backing of public authorities in Europe, which will generate a new, positive, balance between guarantees for security and the need for change. By these means responsibilities can be assumed and objectives for employment fixed, especially through negotiated settlements for the reorganisation of existing work which, while safeguarding competition, bring about a reduction in working time in order to better distribute existing work, in which context several approaches are possible, including a working week of 35 hours or four days, leave for training and voluntary part-time work. |
| We also believe that great potential exists for new activities in the field of services and that the positive development of the social economy sector and local initiatives, as proposed in the "White Paper", is one of the paths to be followed in order to maximize job creation. |
| A new social concensus in Europe should take into account that the European economy is faced with challenges from other parts of the world. The safeguarding of cohesion and the acouisitions of the welfare state is possible in Europe only if businesses can operate competitively. |
| Productivity of businesses has to be improved, their costs contained and their activities orientated towards fields which offer comparative advantages. The operation of the competitive markets must be stimulated, technological innovation and its application to productive processes must be promoted, equitable salary agreements must be guaranteed and competitivity factors must be promoted by means of investment in infrastructures and training. |
| A sound development of the productive economy also requires strong measures against global capital market speculation, the so-called "paper economy" that threatens to erode democratically based policies. To achieve this, co-operation is needed between Europe, the US, Japan and the Bretton Woods institutions. |
| The public sector itself must also be acted upon, improving its efficiency and avoiding bureaucratisation. A prestigious and efficient public sector will allow us to affirm, with conviction, the irreplaceable function in our debate with the right. |
| Employment is the priority and competitivity the instrument. This must be the basis for the defence of and innovation in the welfare state and its accompanying mbdel of solidarity. |
| We wish to develop the social dimension in Europe, including a stronger consumer influence, because our social achievements must be defended - largely the fruit of Socialists' political and trade union action - and because nobody could affirm seriously that its demise - and market mechanisms alone - would not lead to serious risks for social cohesion in Europe, for the Union itself, and for the efficiency of its economy. |
| For us the social dimension of Europe is indispensable and must be developed. For these reasons we want to breath life into the European Social Charter, ensure that the social chapter is applied in all the countries of the Union, and to promote concertation in the European sphere. |
| Europe has the opportunity to establish an innovative model of development which links environmental management and the creation of employment and should exercise world leadership in the area of environmental protection. |
| In line with the Rio Conference, legally binding environmental agreements with clear priorities should be developed: climate, forestry protection, biodiversity, chemicals, waste. |
| The path for this has been set out in our report "Good environment gives good jobs", especially concerning our European environment. |
| Europe should increase and improve environmental assistance to the Third World. There can only be adequate environmental management if the necessary economic and social bases are established. For these reasons Europe must support the opening of world markets to the less developed countries and support the transfer of appropriate technologies and the financial resources so that those countries are not forced to choose between short term economic benefits and long term environmental considerations. |
| The best contribution we can make is to create an model of cooperation and environmental management in Europe, which opens up new fields for job creation, reduces our consumption of natural products and develops sustainable models of production and consumption. |
| In the European countries there is a distancing between the citizens and the parties and public institutions. This especially affects the European institutions. |
| Our democracy must be revitalised and maintain the predominance of the power of the citizen over the power of money: those who have money should not control political power. Corruption, embezzlement and illegal party financing damage trust in the political system and thus democracy itself. Such practices go against all our principles. The renewal of democracy in our societies has a moral dimension which we should firmly uphold. |
| It is essential to renew the bonds between the citizens and their representatives. A competitive functioning of the media market, not an oligopoly, and democratic access to it, should be guaranteed. |
| In our media society, it is above all in this sphere that democratic confrontation is unleashed, which should always be equitable. |
| The future of the political construction of Europe depends, to a large extent, on our capacity to show the citizens that the EU is a useful instrument to improve their lives. Maximum transparency in Comunity debates is an indispensible prerequisite. |
| The concept of European citizenship should be properly defined: a citizenship translated into new rights and responsibilities, which complements those rights and responsibilities derived from belonging to a Member State, and constitute an active element of Comunity construction. This has to be seen in the light of the Edinburgh decision, especially concerning Denmark. |
| The concept of European citizenship should be properly defined: a citizenship translated into new rights and responsibilities, which complements those rights and responsibilities derived from belonging to a Member State, and constitute an active element of Comunity construction. This has to be seen in the light of the Edinburgh decision, especially concerning Denmark. |
| The representation of women at all levels of participation and desision-taking should be increased considerably. In the political sphere, this means progressing until we have an equal balance of men and women in the organisations and activities of our party, and a socialist compromise for the promotion of women in all the institutions of the EU. |
| In the economic and social sphere, it means overcoming discrimination, correcting wage inequalities in a real way, and answering the problem of unemployment affecting women more and the fact that they suffer more from the consequences of social and geographical imbalances. |
| We are witnessing new nationalist reactions which often adopt racist and xenophobic attitudes. Imigration and the needs of many of our fellow human beings are used to stir up the radical right. |
| We want a European society which guarantees equality for all, irrespective of sex, race, religion or ideological conviction. Racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed a new lease of life. |
| We must face the challenge of imigration responsibly and in solidarity. Europe must not appear to be a fortress which puts up barriers which are inaccessible to people from other regions of the world, even though we must not encourage false expectations of employment when we ourselves are suffering high levels of unemployment. Only sustained growth in the countries around us can offer a solution to this problem. |
| We welcome the meeting this week in Copenhagen of the World Summit for Social Development and agree with the UN Secretary General that it represents "a priceless opportunity" to redefine the welfare state and to adopt new strategies to combat world poverty. Too often the Structural Adjustment Programmes imposed on developing countries have increased their capacity to service their international debt by deepening the poverty of their people, and we support the demand in the draft declaration of the Social Summit that the International Financial Institutions must include social development goals in programmes of financial reconstruction. The poverty of the third of the world's population who live at or below subsistence level is a matter of concern not only for their nations, but for Socialist parties in all parts of the world. For that reason, we call upon the Social Summit to give a new impetus to the drive against world poverty by agreeing on measures to reduce the debt of Third World countries, to increase their trade, and to improve aid for their social and economic development. |
| An EU with a true capacity for presence on the international scene through a common foreign and security policy and responsible before the citizens of Europe would have been more effective and freer to act emphatically, from the start, in the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia. We need to strengthen our capacity to act internationally with one voice and popular support. |
| For reasons of solidarity and for its own self-interest, Europe must carry out a policy of active co-operation in its immediate surroundings and towards the less-developed world, contributing to reduce the inequalities between the North and South. Aid given to Lom & Convention countries should at least be maintained at the present level. |
| The EU must reinforce the development of Central and Eastern Europe and open the European path to some countries which, in the midst of all their reforms, need help for their reconstruction, access to the markets of the EU and clear prospects for their integration. |
| We defend the establishment of an association and cooperation area, in all fields, with the Mahgreb countries and the Mediterranean basin. We support all the efforts to ensure the success of the peace process in the Middle East. |
| The Party of European Socialists is aiming for a common task for its member parties, the Group of the PES in the European Parliament and representatives of the national parliamentary groups, in order to establish a common position on the proposals to set before the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference. |
| The enlargement of the European Union should continue, in particular towards the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which have association agreements, and Cyprus and Malta. The 1996 Intergovernmental Conference must establish an action plan and a timetable for this enlargement, which must imply a strengthening of the political construction of the Union. |
| Economic and Monetary Union is a strategic objective, but is inconceivable without strong political institutions to guide it. |
| We look forward to a positive outcome of the working group of the PES on proposals to ensure that the Intergovernmental Conference improves the 6 effectiveness of European institutions and Parliament and increases the democratic transparency of the European Union. We want a democratically founded European Union with a Parliament with power of co-decision and effective European institutions able to act decisively in its fields of competence. To achieve this, majority voting in Council must be extended where appropriate. A clear guiding principle which underpins the European process and its institutions must be established. The strengthening of the Union must go hand in hand with more decentralisation which reinforces the participation of the citizens. |
| These are the challenges. At this crossroads there are diverging paths, that of the right will lead us to conceive of a Europe of the future only as a great, integrated, economic reality. This Europe would not be able to confront the problems. The other path, our path, leads to a Europe conceived more and more as a political reality. |
| Let us opt clearly for this initiative. Only unity among the states of a politically democratic Europe will allow us to overcome the enormous challenges we have before us, as Europeans and as Socialists. |
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