Mr. José Leandro:

I will try to address all the questions. The first was on wages. Competitiveness is not just about costs or wages. It is also about productivity, which concerns a very wide range of issues from skills, education, innovation, etc. The report states that the competitiveness authorities will be institutions or bodies which will foster a debate about policies which foster competitiveness. As part of their mandate they should cover the evolution of wages compared to productivity because this is one of the indicators of competitiveness, which is called, in technical terms, "unit labour costs". This is just one indicator of competitiveness and there is a wide range of other indicators of competitiveness. In Ireland the National Competitiveness Council is already looking at a very broad set of indicators of competitiveness. It has not been decided yet but the Commission will propose a mandate for competitiveness bodies and this mandate will be broader than the simple, narrow focus on cost competitiveness.

These authorities are not aimed at harmonising the way wage-setting mechanisms are negotiated across the eurozone. These mechanisms respond to a wide range of national preferences and legal traditions and the intention is not to interfere with them at all. It is simply to add one more element of information that would be useful when the wage negotiations take place among the social partners, business and the unions. They would have a view of the implications of the different options compared to the main trading partners. In Ireland the main trading partners are the UK, other member states in the eurozone and, because it is a very open economy, countries outside the EU. It is not just about competitiveness among EU member states. The competitiveness authorities would not interfere with the setting of the minimum wage.