Activites

• 1997/04/28 Final act published in Official Journal
• #2001
• 1997/04/24 Council Meeting
  • 2001
• 1997/04/09 Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
  • T4-0151/1997 summary

    In adopting the report by Mr José Manuel GARCIA-Margallo Y Marfil (EPP, Esp), Parliament called for improvements in the use of 'benchmarking', a technique adopted by the Commission to identify shortcomings under a system of comparison. The report highlights aspects such as: (a) benchmarking and competitiveness: the report stresses that an overall benchmark of the performance of the EU is the rate of net job creation; (b) infrastructure and services: Parliament urges that benchmarking be used as a means to compare levels of public investment in the EU with those in the US and Japan and advocates reducing the discrepancies in development among the various regions of the EU by means of infrastructure investment; it calls for the liberalizations pending in the services sector to be continued and for markets to be opened up more quickly in sectors such as professional services, financial services, energy, transport and telecommunications; (c) labour market and social legislation: Parliament believes that to preserve the social protection systems in Europe priority should be given to active employment measures (retraining of workers, training, mobility, etc.); it considers job stability and flexibility to be compatible objectives and calls on the social partners, including SMEs, to be involved in their attainment; (d) research and development: the report calls for imaginative ways to be found to enable greater economic resources to be devoted to research and development. On the subject of future action, Parliament calls on the Commission: - to draw up pilot projects as soon as possible in close cooperation with the Member States and representatives from industry and the trade unions, in order to map out the problems posed in the area of benchmarking and to find standardized processes to identify and characterize best practice; - to arrange for the exchange and collection of information about existing work concerning benchmarking at different levels: worldwide, within the OECD, and at European, national and company level, in order to take advantage of existing experience; - propose a work programme for the forthcoming work on benchmarking, after consulting Parliament. As soon as the results of the pilot projects are available, the Commission should submit an annual progress report for benchmarking. This report could be included in the annual competitiveness report and would be discussed in Council in an annual discussion on competitiveness after Parliament has been consulted. �

• 1997/04/08 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
• 1997/03/20 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A4-0113/1997
• 1996/12/09 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• #1962
• 1996/11/14 Council Meeting
• 1996/10/09 Non-legislative basic document published
  • COM(1996)0463 summary

    OBJECTIVE: Following on from the Commission proposal: 'A Confidence Pact for Employment', the purpose of this Communication is to present an updated analysis of the current state of Europe's competitiveness and to advocate the benchmarking of performances as a tool to promote the improved implementation of measures in key areas for competitiveness. SUBSTANCE: the Commission is certain that, despite its many strong points, the European Union is not exploiting its potential or matching the performance of its major competitors in terms of standards of living, productivity and job creation, with the result that resources are left idle and unemployment rates are high. It goes on to identify a number of problems and challenges to be taken up in the area of competitiveness, the chief ones being: high costs and low intangible investment; excessive public deficits; the continuing need to control state aid; the need to improve the system of life-long learning and upgrade human resources; delays in adopting new technologies (e.g. the information society); financing innovation; and quality control. On the basis of this analysis, the Commission proposes that the Council and Parliament should promote: - benchmarking as a valuable tool for identifying the underlying reasons for poor competitive performances and helping to address these weaknesses and back the Commission's intention of presenting a benchmarking programme in the coming year, on the basis of close consultations with industry and the Member States, to track progress in improving competitiveness in key areas; - a European Quality Promotion policy based on a multi-annual European Quality Promotion Programme of actions, centring in particular on the promotion of self-assessment, benchmarking, networking of information and the development of European Quality Training programmes and techniques for measuring progress. �

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: COM(1996)0463
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A4-0113/1997
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T4-0151/1997
• Debate in Council: 2001

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)