The European Parliament,

-  having regard to the draft communication from the Commission (COM(1999) 476 - C5-0260/1999 ),

-  having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999 of 21 June 1999(1) with general provisions on the Structural Funds, and in particular Articles 5 and 20 thereof,

-  having regard to the decisions of the Berlin European Council of 24 and 25 March 1999 on the level of allocations for the Structural Funds for the period 2000 - 2006,

-  having regard to the code of conduct for implementing the structural policies by the Commission of 6 May 1999(2) ,

-  having regard to its resolution of 28 October 1999(3) on the draft general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2000 - Section III - Commission, and in particular paragraph 35 thereof,

-  having regard to the two former "Human Resources" Initiatives, ADAPT which addressed the human resources aspects of industrial change and EMPLOYMENT with its four distinct strands: NOW for developing equal opportunities for women in the labour market, HORIZON for disabled and other disadvantaged groups, YOUTHSTART for young people without formal qualifications and INTEGRA for people excluded or at risk of exclusion from the labour market,

-  having regard to Rule 47(1) of its Rules of Procedure,

-  having regard to the report of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the opinions of the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities, the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy, the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism (A5-0034/2000 ),

General

1.  Approves the EQUAL programme, which expresses in concrete terms the EU's aim to reinforce social cohesion and combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, which is also suffered by refugees and asylum-seekers;

2.  Welcomes the fact that the Commission has oriented the Community initiative EQUAL in accordance with employment policy guidelines and developed a set of assistance mechanisms aimed at establishing innovative models and approaches to labour-market policy strategies designed to combat discrimination and inequality in a European context;

3.  Considers that in addition to combating workplace discrimination, programme objectives should also include making greater use of employment potential, whereby account should be taken of the quality of jobs;

4.  Considers that discrimination cannot be combated merely through financial measures, and calls on the Member States and the EU to remove discriminatory laws as a matter of urgency as stipulated by Article 13 of the EC Treaty;

Partnership

5.  Welcomes the Commission's intention to target projects better than in the past, on a more strategic basis, with a view to combating discrimination, and to reinforce partnerships between the public authorities, the private sector and NGOs;

6.  Welcomes the proposal for Geographical Development Partnerships and asks the Commission to introduce explicit safeguards in the EQUAL guidelines to guarantee the full and direct participation of NGOs representing discriminated groups in all aspects of the EQUAL programme;

7.  Considers that Geographical Development Partnerships should be integrated with the local and regional economic development strategies within the Member States, by consulting with regional development agencies or equivalent bodies on the planning and implementation of projects, and reporting the results of projects back to the structural funds Monitoring Committees at regional level;

8.  Calls on the Commission to make explicit in the EQUAL Guidelines that Member States must choose both Geographical and Sectoral Development Partnerships for each of the selected thematic fields in their Community Initiative Programmes in order to ensure a balanced involvement of all discriminated groups in the EQUAL programme;

9.  Looks to the Commission to make budget resources available for each of the thematic fields and the target groups on the basis of a fixed scale;

10.  Draws attention to the fact that predominantly large-scale association networks and regional groupings will receive assistance and expects that they will be attentive to the creative ideas and needs of smaller projects and urges the Commission to ensure that the arrangements regarding the Development Partnerships are sufficiently flexible not only to enable small project promoters to take part but to also allow the addition of partners during the lifetime of the partnership;

11.  Calls therefore on the Commission to reword paragraph 12 of its draft communication as follows:

"EQUAL will operate within these thematic fields principally through integrated projects, called development partnerships (DPs). The Development Partnerships are dynamic and opened to new and innovative projects, also coming from small organisations not included in the initial partnership. These small organisations must be able to make their contribution in becoming involved during the life of the partnership:

Member States can choose either or both of these types of partnership to suit the thematic fields they have selected."

12.  Supports the possibility of including in the networks organisations and projects from the countries which have applied to join the European Union and calls for existing project partnerships from earlier programmes which represent positive examples of successful work to be taken into account to a greater extent in the EQUAL initiative;

13.  Takes the view that the Commission should ensure the Member States and Development Partnerships undertake comprehensive impact assessment and data collection in relation to each of the specific discriminated target groups. All the discriminated groups concerned must be represented directly on the EQUAL monitoring committees as full members. The direct involvement of the discriminated target groups in EQUAL and its impact on them must be monitored and evaluated adequately;

14.  Calls on the Commission to ensure that the thematic fields identified in the EQUAL guidelines are to be fully and equally accessible to all discriminated target groups supported by the EQUAL programme and that no thematic field is identified for participation by one discriminated target group to the exclusion of all other discriminated groups;

Thematic fields

15.  Calls on the Commission to insert the following topics under the "Employability" pillar:

16.  Calls on the Commission to insert the following topics under the "Entrepreneurship" pillar:

17.  Calls on the Commission to insert the following topics under the "Adaptability" pillar:

18.  Calls on the Commission to insert the following topics under the "Equal opportunities" pillar:

19.  Points out that any change in priorities for the Community's EQUAL initiative will require that Parliament be consulted again;

20.  Calls on the Commission to reword paragraph 11 of its draft communication as follows:

"The list of thematic fields may be reviewed every two years to take account of developments in the labour market and in employment. Proposals for additional thematic fields will be put forward by the Commission following the necessary consultations. The new proposals will be submitted for agreement to the ESF Committee after discussion in the Employment Committee and submitted to the European Parliament for its opinion."

Equal opportunities

21.  Asks the Commission to ensure that in the Community Initiative Programmes (CIPs) a clear distinction is made between priority actions aimed at combating gender discrimination and inequality between women and men on one hand, and actions aimed at combating discrimination and inequalities based on racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation on the other;

22.  Calls upon the Commission to earmark funds for CIPs promoting new means of combating gender discrimination and inequalities between women and men; asks the Member States, therefore, to earmark financing for combating local female unemployment at least in proportion to the unemployment rate for women recorded at the local level;

23.  Asks the Commission to see to it that the selection of programmes by Member States takes account of the need to adopt a gender mainstreaming approach in each of the chosen thematic fields under the four pillars, in order to tackle successfully gender discrimination and inequality between women and men;

Asylum seekers

24.  Considers that asylum-seekers, and in particular those whose application is still under consideration and those under temporary protection, should be eligible for the EQUAL programme;

25.  Specifically calls on the Commission to ensure that the EQUAL programme makes a significant contribution to the social integration of refugees and asylum-seekers by helping them to find work, and that particular attention is paid to immigrant and refugee women, because of the multiple discrimination which they suffer;

26.  Calls on the Commission, with the Member States, in general to seek better ways than are used at present of integrating asylum-seekers and all groups that suffer from discrimination into vocational training programmes and the job market, as otherwise the EQUAL programme will have no real effect on them;

Involving business

27.  Considers it essential that EQUAL address the weaknesses identified by the Commission resulting from inadequate participation by business in the EMPLOYMENT and ADAPT Initiatives which often meant that good projects did not lead to real job opportunities and that the positive experience of innovative actions of small promoters was jeopardised by their distance from the policy process;

28.  Stresses the importance of the third sector and the social economy in enhancing the role of citizens and social groups, thereby contributing to the democratisation of local economy and combating any form of exclusion or discrimination;

Administration

29.  Recognises that the proposed administrative structure and procedure is very complex and probably quite difficult to administer and control in practice; calls on the Commission to amend its communication in accordance with the following principles:

30.  Calls upon the Commission to employ simple, clear language in all documents drawn up and distributed in connection with this initiative programme, to avoid perpetuating the ambiguities which already exist in the various language versions and to give practical meaning to the concepts of prevention, innovation, transnationality, cooperation management, comprehensive dissemination, including via the Internet, evaluation and gender mainstreaming;

31.  Points at the problem for applicants of one Member State with a given priority list of thematic areas to be tackled to identify a partner in another Member State which might have different national priorities, and therefore suggests the creation of infopools with the addresses of possible partners in all EU countries;

32.  Points out that problems could arise with co-financing at the preparatory stage of the EQUAL Community initiative;

33.  Asks to be informed about the modalities of payment flows and urges the financing bodies to deliver payments at the beginning of the projects so that smaller project partners do not undergo enormous financial problems;

Assessment of results

34.  Supports the Commission's innovative approach of making the positive experiences in carrying out activities under EQUAL in one Member State available to other Member States within the framework of international networks and providing for the exchange of experiences at European level as part of the initiative;

35.  Calls on the Commission to set up thematic networking in order to achieve a genuine multiplier effect by the dissemination of results and best practice and exchange of experiences, with particular emphasis on the most innovative and efficient projects related to gender-mainstreaming;

36.  Calls on the Commission to ensure that the programme will be monitored and evaluated in such a way as to fully exploit the potential leverage effect, in particular in terms of dissemination of best practice;

37.  Calls on the Commission to reword paragraph 43 of its draft communication as follows:

'If EQUAL is fully to play its role as a testing ground for developing and promoting new ways of delivering employment policies, it will need strategic cooperation mechanisms between Member States to exploit the potential impact of good practice identified all over the Union. Two types of action will be implemented by the Commission to support this process:

Coordination with other Community policies

38.  Calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure a proper coordination between the activities and budgetary funds provided by the EQUAL initiative and the other Community initiatives, by the ESF and the Structural Funds in general, by the budget headings for innovative projects, by the Fourth Action Programme on Equal Opportunities and other Community policy instruments having a bearing on equality for women and men, in order to optimise the use of Community resources and to ensure a successful implementation of gender mainstreaming and equal opportunity actions;Technical assistance;

Technical assistance

39.  Considers that a solution regarding technical assistance in the sphere of the EQUAL initiative should be devised in the overall context of the Commission reform process currently under discussion;

40.  Calls on the Commission to amend paragraph 40 of the draft communication as follows:

'Technical assistance, with a budget not exceeding 5% of the ESF co-financing of the CIP, will be available to support the implementation of Actions 1 to 3 and will be used particularly for the preparatory phase and the dissemination of the experience gained and the results achieved by the development partnerships.'

Final provisions

41.  Reserves the right not to release the appropriations earmarked in the budgetary reserve for the EQUAL initiative until the Commission has submitted the final programme;

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42.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission and the governments of the Member States.

(1) OJ L 161, 26.6.1999, p. 1. (2) OJ C 279, 1.10.1999, p. 488. (3) See minutes of the sitting, Part II, Item 1.