Ireland will face a serious challenge implementing new EU-enforced employment guidelines despite its recent economic success, the Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn, has warned. The guidelines - drafted by Mr Flynn - are set to be approved by the special EU jobs summit today. They include a rigorous new system to monitor the response of each state to the EU's employment crisis.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, arrived here last night from London for a formal dinner with the other leaders.
The leaders were greeted by a demonstration of up to 40,000 trade unionists from all over Europe - by far the largest march that this tiny, rich duchy has seen in living memory. Convened by the European Trade Union Confederation, the marchers led off with a banner which simply carried the number "18,212,500" - the total number of people out of work in the EU.
Amid the noise of brass bands, clanging oil drums, firecrackers and a sea of red flags from as far afield as Greece and Portugal, other banners elaborated their message: "For a 32-hour week"; "A social Europe, not a bosses' Europe"; "He who sows misery harvests anger" In his letter to fellow leaders setting out the Irish position on the summit, Mr Ahern has stressed that EU structural funds will continue to play a vitally important role in tackling unemployment in Ireland.
Mr Ahern said it was essential to ensure that adequate domestic and EU resources were available to overcome the disadvantages created by Ireland's peripheral location in Europe. Monies must also be channelled into modernising education systems, training and employment, well into the next millennium, he said.
"It will be particularly important to ensure an adequate availability of domestic and EU resources to address the deeply ingrained problems of underdevelopment, unemployment and exclusion in those areas which have not benefited from the positive performance of the economy."
The Taoiseach also strongly reaffirmed Ireland's commitment to EU employment policy. He told his fellow EU leaders that Ireland very much welcomed the greatly enhanced co-operation and co-ordination of employment policies created by the Treaty of Amsterdam.
At the meeting, Mr Ahern will also raise the ending of duty free sales in 1999 but there is no sign of any weakening by the Commission on the issue. On Wednesday, the Internal Market Commissioner, Mr Mario Monti, insisted that the decision was irreversible but said the Commission would look favourably on state aid to regions particularly affected by the change.
Mr Flynn told The Irish Times that, although Ireland had made major progress on jobs, it still had serious problems with its relatively low overall rate of employment, with its share of the long-term unemployed, and with the number of school-leavers who left without qualifications. In each case the Irish situation was significantly worse than the European average.
He said the Government would also have to raise child-care provisions.
Over dinner last night leaders were expected to attempt to browbeat the Greeks into lifting their objections to Turkey's participation in a new European Conference of pre-accession states.
They almost certainly also touched on the nomination of the first president of the European Central Bank, their first opportunity since the surprise nomination by France of its central bank governor, Mr Jean-Claude Trichet.
