EL MUNDO les ofrece la transcripción en inglés
del documento firmado por Tony Blair y Gerhard Schröeder
que recoge las líneas maestras de la nueva socialdemocracia,
bajo el título: Europa: La tercera vía.
IV. An active labour market
policy for the left
The state must become an active agent for employment,
not merely the passive recipient of the casualties of economic
failure.
People who have never had experience of work or who have been
out of work for long periods lose the skills
necessary to compete in the labour market. Prolonged unemployment
also damages individual life chances in other ways and makes
it more difficult for individuals to
participate fully in society.
A welfare system that puts limits on an individualÕs ability
to find a job must be reformed.
Modern social democrats want to transform the safety net of entitlements
into a springboard to personal responsibility.
For our societies, the imperatives of social justice are
more than the distribution of cash transfers. Our objective is
the widening of equality of opportunity, regardless of race,
age or disability, to fight social exclusion and ensure
equality between men and women.
People rightly demand high-quality public services and solidarity
for all who need help - but also fairness towards those who pay
for it. All social policy instruments must improve life chances,
encourage self-help and promote personal responsibility.
With this aim in mind, the health care system and the system
for ensuring financial security in old age are being thoroughly
modernised in Germany by adapting both to the changes in life
expectancy and changing lifelong patterns of employment, without
sacrificing the principle of solidarity. The same thinking applies
to the introduction of stakeholder pensions and the reform of
disability benefits in Britain.
Periods of unemployment in an economy without jobs for life
must become an opportunity to attain qualifications and
foster personal development. Part-time work and low-paid work
are better than no work because they ease the transition from
unemployment to jobs.
New policies to offer unemployed people jobs and training are
a social democratic priority -but we also expect everyone to
take up the opportunity offered.
But providing people with the skills and abilities to enter the
workforce is not enough. The tax and benefits systems need to
make sure it is in people's interests to work. A streamlined
and modernised tax and benefits system is a significant component
of the left's active supply-side labour market policy. We must:
- Make work pay for individuals and families. The biggest part
of the income must remain in the pockets of those who worked
for it.
- Encourage employers to offer 'entry' jobs to the labour market
by lowering the burden of tax and social security contributions
on low-paid jobs. We must explore the scope to lower the burden
of non-wage labour costs by environmental taxes.
- Introduce targeted programmes for the long-term unemployed
and other disadvantaged groups to give them
the opportunity to reintegrate into the labour market on the
principle of rights and responsibilities going together.
- Assess all benefit recipients, including people of working
age in the receipt of disability benefits, for their potential
to earn, and reform state employment services to assist those
capable of work to find appropriate work.
- Support enterprise and setting up an own business as a viable
route out of unemployment. Such decisions contain considerable
risks for those who dare to make such a step. We must support
those people by managing these risks.
The left's supply-side agenda will hasten structural change.
But it will also make that change easier to live with and manage.
Adapting to change is never easy and the speed of change appears
faster than ever before, not least under the impact of new technologies.
Change inevitably destroys some jobs, but it creates others.
However, there can be lags between job losses in one sector
and the creation of new jobs elsewhere. Whatever the longer-term
benefits for economies and living standards, particular industries
and communities can experience the costs before the gains. Hence
we must focus our efforts on easing localised problems of transition.
The dislocating effects of change will be greater the longer
they are resisted, but it is no good pretending that they can
be wished away.
Adjustment will be the easier, the more labour and product markets
are working properly. Barriers to employment in relatively low
productivity sectors need to be lowered if employees displaced
by the productivity gains that are an inherent feature of structural
change are to find jobs elsewhere. The labour market needs a
low-wage sector in order to make low-skill jobs available. The
tax and benefits system can replenish low incomes from employment
and at the same time save on support payments for the unemployed.
V. Political benchmarking
in Europe
The challenge is the definition and implementation
of a new social democratic politics in Europe. We do not advocate
a single European model, still less the transformation of the
European Union into a superstate. We are pro-Europe and pro-reform
in Europe. People will support further steps towards integration
where there is real value-added and they can be clearly justified
- such as action to combat crime and destruction of the environment
as well as the promotion of common goals in social and employment
policy. But at the same time Europe urgently needs reform - more
efficient and transparent institutions, reform of outdated policies
and decisive action against waste and fraud. [
We are presenting our ideas as an outline, not a finalised programme.
The politics of the New Centre and the Third Way is already a
reality in many city councils, in reformed national policies,
in European co-operation and in new international initiatives.
[Image] [Image]To this end the German and British governments
have decided to embed their existing arrangements for exchanging
views on policy development in a broader approach. We propose
to do this in three ways:
- First, there will be a series of ministerial meetings, supported
by frequent contacts among their close staff.
- We will seek discussion with political leaders in other European
countries who wish to take forward with us modernising ideas
for social democracy in their respective national contexts. We
will start on this now.
- We will establish a network of experts, farsighted thinkers,
political fora and discussion meetings. We will thereby deepen
and continually further develop the concept of the New Centre
and the Third Way. This is the priority for us. [Image] [Image]The
aim of this declaration is to give impetus to modernisation.
We invite all social democrats in Europe not to let this historic
opportunity for renewal pass by. The diversity of our ideas is
our greatest asset for the future. Our societies expect us to
knit together our diverse experiences in a new coherent programme.
Let us together build social democracy's success for the new
century. Let the politics of the Third Way and the Neue Mitte
be Europe's new hope.