UNEMPLOYMENT is a "make or break" issue for the European Union, according to Mr Stuart Holland, a former British Labour shadow spokesman on finance and former adviser to Mr Jacques Delors.
He was speaking at a conference for the EU's Network of the Unemployed (ENU) in Ennis on the impact EMU would have on unemployment and predicted that if the member states kept to current criteria, another 10 million people would lose their jobs.
"Europe's unemployed are not against monetary union, but we believe that unless the convergence criteria are changed to include a commitment to tacking unemployment, the entire EMU project will have detrimental effects for those living in poverty."
The ENU conference was one of two being held in Ireland this week to review EU policies towards those living in poverty. The second was sponsored by the Department of Social Welfare in Dublin Castle.
The secretary of the Department, Mr Ed McCumiskey, told the opening of the conference on Thursday morning that while problems like unemployment had existed for a long time, it was only in recent years that they had been recognised as "endemic" and a "feature of life in the EU". It was now realised that the welfare state in its traditional form, based on cohesive social forces like the family, had to be reformed.
Mr McComiskey was reading a speech on behalf of the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, who was unable to attend because of his libel action against the Sunday Independent.
There was also a resource crisis, Mr McComiskey said. "Funding, quite simply, cannot keep pace if we continue without making changes," he said. There was also "a function crisis which expresses itself as a wider gap between the welfare services which are available and the needs which services are being asked to meet". As a result, "black spots" had arisen.
There was also a crisis of legitimacy. The idea of popular solidarity which underpinned the welfare state in the past was increasingly being challenged. A new balance had to be struck between competition and solidarity, one which recognised that labour was not merely a commodity but represented human beings.
Prof Peter Abrahamson, of the social sciences faculty of Roskilde University in the Netherlands, said there was still a strong sense of social solidarity in the EU. Over 90 per cent of respondents to a 1993 EU survey said the agreed with the statement that "social security was a major achievement of modern society".
There was also evidence that less developed EU states were catching up on the richer states. "The tendency over time however is that there has been a substantial reduction (in poverty) in southern Europe and some increase, or stagnation in the north. Ultimately, there are, unfortunately, no signs of poverty going away anywhere. More recent national observations indicate that social exclusion is on the increase."
Finding solutions was a complex problem, Prof Abramson said. At tempts to privatise elements of the social welfare system by encouraging measures like people at work taking out unemployment assistance would increase the social divide. It could lead to two tier social welfare, with those least in need benefiting most "ultimately threatening the cohesion of society as a whole".
The introduction of new problems of social exclusion arising from the different ethnic origin or cultural orientation of some poor people also added to traditional problems of poverty. There was no way around the need for more generous income redistribution schemes if all EU citizens were to enjoy full membership of society.