European Parliament
Committee on Employment and Social Affairs

DRAFT OPINION

of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy on the White paper presented by the Commission on the strategy for a future chemicals policy
(COM(2001) 88 - C5-0000/2001 - 2001/0000 (COS))

Draftsperson: Jean Lambert

PROCEDURE
The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs appointed Jean Lambert draftsman at its meeting of 5 April 2001.
It considered the draft opinion at its meeting(s) of 25 April 2001.
At the latter/last meeting it adopted the following conclusions by ... votes to ..., with ... abstentions/unanimously.
The following took part in the vote/The following were present for the vote: ..., chairman/acting chairman; ... (and ...), vice-chairman/chairmen; ..., draftsman; ..., ... (for ...), ... (for ... pursuant to Rule 153(2)), ... and ... .

CONCLUSIONS
The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs calls on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following points in its motion for a resolution:

1. Establishes that sustainable development encompasses environmental, social and economic dimensions; stresses that there is no contradiction but a genuine complementarity between the objectives of creating jobs, economic development and sustainable development strategies; such development can play an important role in creating new models and methods of production; reiterates that the local economy has a vital role to play in reducing transport requirements, maintaining social cohesion, reducing imports and assisting in the development of more flexible working patterns and therefore urges the Council and the Commission to maintain the value of the budget line for local employment initiatives; demands specifically for EU public procurement rules environmental and social criteria, which should be properly audited;

2. Stresses the need for a comprehensive and coordinated approach to poverty and social exclusion; maintains that social inclusion is an essential element of sustainable development and that a minimum income and the ability to have access to essential services of general interest are key elements in such development; therefore requires that these factors are taken into consideration in any further liberalisation of services of general interest;

3. Underlines the significance of measures to promote and encourage quality of life including the development of more and better jobs; stresses in this context the importance of the Social Agenda as an element in a Sustainable Development Strategy; emphasizes that a resource efficient sustainable economy also means enabling people to work efficiently through effective consultation and participation in the work-place, reduced working hours and good quality work in safe working conditions supported by an effective system of social security; calls for rapid progress to be made on the initial steps taken in this direction at the Stockholm Summit;

4. Requires that the environmental dimension be considered in all training programmes funded by the EU through the ESF and Community initiatives such as EQUAL ; requests that in the indicators used to arrive at qualitative assessments of educational attainment in the EU, the role of education in environmental factors should be included as this provides the basis for an environmentally aware society.