European

By Maarten Botterman
European Commission
DG XIII - Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research.

At the end of the 2nd millennium we find ourselves in a world that has changed faster than our imagination. It is hard to grasp that change: it is even harder to adapt to it, specifically since one of the main aspects of the new, emerging society is a continuous change. Both in terms of a changing socio-economic environment, and in terms of changing technologies, specifically those in the sector of information and communication.

One of the main symptoms of this change is the development of unemployment. More and more people find themselves without a job, and more of them have given up hope to ever become employed, again. In the quest for a new balance, the main challenge is to find a way to develop a society Europeans want, whilst staying in the game in an ever more global world economy. As Time Magazine (8 December 1997) captured the mood: "Can Europe build a middle road between uncaring capitalism and the costly welfare state?".

Changes in Labour Market

Where we used to be "learned for life" in our youth, life-long-learning needs to step in place. The education one receives in the "obligatory years" may help you to start, but the labour market has less and less unskilled labour to offer. According to Commissioner Flynn (Employment and Social Affairs) at the "People First" conference in Brussels on 16 February this year, 1 on 5 youngsters leave school without any clear skill. Unemployment figures are highest amongst youth: 20% (EU average 10.6%).

The skills you do learn, on top of the basic education, may still find you a job. Even more so when the education or training was aimed at expected labour market needs. A scheme supporting this is the policy in Denmark: the Government committed itself to offer a job or specific job training for all school leavers, within 6 months. Unemployment under youth is the lowest in the Union: 10.6% (EU: 20.6%). %.

The skills you learned and developed over a series of years, while working, may not be needed anymore, in the near future. A continuous training, aimed at adapting to change, will make it possible for you to stay "employable". The importance of this becomes utterly clear when considered the continuous decline jobs in all sectors, other than the service sector, where 1 to 1.5 million jobs were created in Europe over the last years, every year.

Since 1993 micro-enterprises created 2x more jobs than large enterprises. A survey showed that no further growth is expected by the existing micro-enterprises. The biggest barrier: shortage of skills at the labour market. This despite the vast labour reserves in Europe.

In order to tackle unemployment in Europe, a first "Job Summit" was held in Luxembourg, November last year. The European Council adopted the Employment Guidelines, proposed by the Commission, with the following main lines of action proposed:

• Employability
• Enterpreneurship
• Adaptability
• Equal opportunities

The Guidelines will be incorporated in national employment's Action Plans and a report on the implementation will be submitted to the Cardiff European Council Summit in June 1998. A revised set of guidelines will be proposed to the Summit in Vienna, December 1998.

European RTD

In it's proposal for the 5th Framework Programme the Commission brings together for the first time new ways of working and electronic commerce in one key action. The aim of that key action is to develop technologies to help companies operate more efficiently and to make commerce in goods and services more efficient, and facilitate improvements in working conditions and the quality of work. The priority topics under this key action are:

• Flexible, mobile and remote working methods and tools, for individuals and for co-operative and group working and working methods based on simulation and virtual reality including the related training;
• Management systems for suppliers and consumers, including systems supporting mass-customisation and interoperable and secure payment systems;
• Information and network security, including cryptography, techniques for combating computer crime, the technical means for authentication and the protection of integrity and intellectual property and "privacy enhancing technologies".

Today, under the 4th Framework Programme, main contributions came from the RTD specific programmes ACTS (Advanced Communications Technologies and Services), ESPRIT (Information Technology), and Telematics (mainly in the domain "Urban and Rural Areas"). The first 3 projects exploring the domain were launched in 1992 under the ORA programme: one exploring the psychological and social aspects of teleworking in rural areas (PATRA), one exploring telework as Business Case (MITRE), and one for setting up a network for concertation on telework (SYNERGY/ECTF). A Call for Proposals in 1993 resulted into 30 projects preparing the research in this area: many more project proposals were based on the work done over 1994/1995. Follow up was proposed under ACTS, ESPRIT, and Telematics, but also under the Trans European (Telecom) Networks, as well as under the Structural Funds.

It is expected that further development of CSCW, mobile multimedia technologies and services, increasing bandwidth and virtual presence technologies and services will take away even more of the lasting technological barriers against teleworking. With the Internet which allows access to all information sources available on-line, data-warehousing, and increasing amount of information available in digital format, and the increasing uptake of Intranet implementation within organisations, in the future nobody will need to travel anymore in order to retrieve information.

The main challenge is to keep up with social, economic, and psychological developments. Again, within the 5th Framework Programme more attention will be given to socio-economic research in this area.