Economic Dialogue on the 2016 European Semester, in the EP in Brussels.&nbsp;Statements by Valdis DOMBROVSKIS, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Euro and Social Dialogue, Marianne THYSSEN, Member of the EC in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Alfred SANT (S&amp;D, MT), rapporteur, and Sofia RIBEIRO (EPP, PT), rapporteur.

Brussels

exchange of views

economic dialogue (T)

SANT, Alfred (S&D, MT)

DOMBROVSKIS, Valdis (EPP, LV, EC)

THYSSEN, Marianne (EPP, BE, EC)

RIBEIRO, Sofia (EPP, PT)

European Semester (T)

Economic Dialogue on the 2016 European Semester: extracts from the exchange of views Valdis DOMBROVSKIS and Marianne THYSSEN, EC Members

SOUNDBITE (English), Valdis DOMBROVSKIS, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Euro and Social Dialogue, The Commission makes proposals under the excessive deficit procedure. First we can recommend the Council to abrogate 3 countries from the excessive deficit procedure: Cyprus, Ireland and Slovenia. Their deficits have been broad down below 3 %of GDP, and according to our forecast this correction is durable.

Secondly we have assess of the compliance of Belgium, Italy and Finland with depth criteria of the treaty, our efforts under the article 136.3 of the treaty that takes into account all relevant factors, suggest that the debt criteria should be considered as currently compliant within the case of Italy we will revisit the situation once more information becomes available on 2017 budget.

SOUNDBITE (English), Marianne THYSSEN, Member of the EC in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, When we see that we still have 21 million people that are unemployed, and when we know that we still have more than 4 million of young people unemployed, and that poverty remains at high levels, we know that we have to do better.

SOUNDBITE (English), Marianne THYSSEN, To stimulate job creation, member states such as Germany or France, need to continue to pursue efforts to reduce the tax wedge on labour. We pay attention to the reduction of poverty and social exclusion by encouraging member states such as Italy and Bulgaria to insure adequate social safeness for all. Many recommendations also address the challenge linked to skills developments, education outcome and training.

SOUNDBITE (English), Alfred SANT (S&amp;D, MT), rapporteur, The proposal of fully or substantially implemented CSR's has more than half 2012 - 2015 semester cycles, based on the EC own assessments: 11% in 2012 compare to 4% in 2015. At the same time the percentage of the recommendation were limited to no progress was registered rose from nearly 20% in 2012 to more than 50% in 2015.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Sofia RIBEIRO (EPP, PT), rapporteur, What we really need is a growth plan above everything. In this period we agreed that growth plans are not compatible with this sort of sanctions. How can the same country that has suffered from reforms, can now be the target of sanctions, when one of the things causing the deficit was coordinated with the EC.

SOUNDBITE (English), Valdis DOMBROVSKIS, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Euro and Social Dialogue, Related to the stability and growth pact , and potential sanctions, as you are aware, decisions on excessive deficit procedure based on art. 136 of the Treaty in the case of Spain and Portugal has been postpone till early July, and I will say that there are now plans to postpone those decision further.

SOUNDBITE (English), Valdis DOMBROVSKIS, We are not anymore in a position of overall fiscal consolidation. To the contrary, as mentioned, in that overall euro area fiscal stand it is already slightly expansionary. This means while nominal budget deficit continue to go down, the structural budget deficit taking into account effects of economic circle is already starting to increase.

SOUNDBITE (English), Marianne THYSSEN, Member of the EC in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, On the employment contracts there we made some remarks for some member states, and we have some recommendation on the duality of the labour market and the transition from atypical contracts to permanent contracts, but also we have some recommendation for certain member states to look at specific type of contracts. we've seen that there is an evolution not only to go to atypical liberal contracts but also to go to what we call civil law contracts, - people are so called self-employed, so there you can also see that there is a kind of dualisation of the labour market that is coming up.