The European Employment strategy dates back to 1997 when EU countries are taking action to establish a set of common employment policy objectives. Its main objective is to create more and better jobs across the EU. It is already part of the Europe 2020 growth strategy and is implemented trough the European semester which is an annual process to promote close coordination of policies between EU countries an EU institution. In particular the implementation of the European Employment strategy supported by the Employment Committee includes the following four stages of the European Semester:
1 - Employment Guidelines include common priorities and targets for employment policies. They are proposed by the Commission, endorsed by national government and adopted by the EU Council.
2 - The Joint employment report (JER) is based on:
(a) the assessment of the employment situation in Europe ;
(b) the implementation of the Employment Guidelines ;
(c) an assessment of the Scoreboard of key employment and social indicators. It is published by Commission and adopted by the EU Council.
3 - National Reform Programs (NRP) are prepared and submitted by national governments and the Commission is analyzing whether they are in line with the Europe 2020 objectives (database NRPs prior to 2011).
4 - Based on the NPRs evaluation, the Commission publishes a series of reports that analyze the economic policies of the EU countries and issues Country-specific recommendations.
By Martin Mitkov