Mr. Koos Richelle:

These are not the easiest of questions to answer and they are also highly political. I will try to limit myself to the technical and explanatory issues rather than the politics.

On equality, in this framework of macroeconomic governance in the European semester we have introduced inequality to the scoreboard by comparing the lowest quintile with the other quintiles. From this, we see that inequality has grown throughout Europe, in all countries, during the crisis. There is no exception to this. Inequality is not only discussed within the European semester. In a lot of areas served by the Commission we issue communications, statistics and draw attention to the issue. We have referred to the numbers of women on boards of companies, for example, and also to the position of the Roma community, the biggest minority group in the world. There is huge potential within that community in the context of the labour market, but there is inquality all over the place. We try to address various inequalities in a specific way. Within this European semester, as I said, we do it mainly through the GINI co-efficients and comparing the lowest quintile with the upper quintiles.

We communicate in different ways, which also means that we have different means to address the issue. There are various means available to pursue a number of policy targets. In the social field the main means is the European Social Fund, ESF, which is, essentially, the European employment fund. We call it a social fund, but it serves to keep people in employment or guide them to it. For the first time, each country has been advised to use at least 20% of its ESF allocation for social integration activities. The funds are to be used to address people who are further away from the labour market and need specific attention. We now have a European instrument for aid for the most deprived, which is the successor to food aid. We can also give material and immaterial assistance to people who are on the margins of society. There are specific means devoted to these areas. Slowly, we are moving beyond the employment field into the realm of the social issues underlying unemployment. These are examples of how we address inequality. Each and every member state has an important role to play. We have asked those member states which have large Roma populations to develop a Roma integration strategy which should outline how they intend to address the question of integration, including spending some of their own resources.

We do not have a short list of critical factors for growth. The handbook for growth is not available. General economic knowledge, good public administration, a good banking system, transparency and other factors all play a role. There is no list of critical factors other than what comes out of economic science. There is no handbook in this respect.