Elisabeth Morin, on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. – (FR) Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteur, first I would like to express my thanks to the rapporteur, Anne Van Lancker, and to the members of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats for the high standard of consultation we engaged in together to come up with this text, which sums up our shared convictions and the way we would like to see the Employment Guidelines change.

Growth in jobs in Europe, in accordance with the Lisbon strategy, should from now on be pursued taking account of three major recent or current changes. These are the globalisation of the economy, which forces Europe to be incisive from an economic point of view and from the point of view of developing employment; flexicurity, which is absolutely necessary for the development of our companies and therefore of employment; and, of course the construction of a social Europe.

To achieve this, we introduced three particular highlights into this update of the Employment Guidelines.

On the one hand, there is the very necessary fight to stop people leaving education systems without any qualifications. Leaving education without qualifications means not being equipped for integration into a job and therefore not having the resources for social integration. That is our first duty and we really need to work hard at it.

The second point we need to be very concerned about is maintaining and developing lifelong learning, which is the only way of guaranteeing ongoing employability and mobility of employees.

The third point concerns validation of acquired experience, which really enables employees to progress their careers, and also enables companies to adapt effectively to new requirements.

We reached agreement on all these points, and I therefore thank the members of the PPE-DE Group for their support in today’s vote.