The executive Commission presented its new Report on the progress made towards the quantitative and qualitative improvement of employment in Europe in Brussels in recent days. In spite of the confirmation of the trend towards a growth in the creation of new jobs accompanied by a slight downturn in the rate of unemployment in the 25-member EU much still remains to be done at both the national and Community level to improve the quality of jobs. A demonstration of this is the fact that one European wage-earner out of five declares himself/herself dissatisfied with his/her own job, with high points of over 30% in Greece, Spain, the UK and Italy. To redress this situation, the European Commission for employment and social affairs intends to base its guidelines for employment 2003/2005 on ten indicators of quality of work: including professional qualification, education and training throughout life; integration and access to the labour market.
