Mr. Günther Oettinger:

In meeting our treaty obligations ensuring there is no discrimination and ensuring equality and inclusion are clear European Union priorities. They are obligations for us as an employer inside the Commission and in terms of European Union citizenship. We want to see them practised in member states and as part of the complete picture in the European Union and beyond in development aid and neighbourhood policies and so on. Inside the Commission we are doing a lot in the interests of all of our staff via inclusion programmes to have fair, attractive and flexible working places, as well as via a clear order to ensure there is no discrimination and have a policy whereby people can let us know if anything goes wrong. We are an engaged employer and sometimes pioneering.

The European Semester, including the process and recommendations, was born at a time of financial and economic crisis. It is an ongoing process primarily related to economic analysis and recommendations. With the two pillars generated by our communication last autumn and the Gothenburg Summit conclusions, increasingly European Monetary Union and the Single Market in the European Union must be completed by clear societal rules. With limited room to manoeuvre in the next multi-annual financial framework, MFF, perhaps we might invest more in the direction demanded by Ireland, but for the moment the majority of member states are quite defensive. They do not accept that the European Union is doing too much in societal fields. They have stated it is up to us, that it is a national and regional competence and that we can act and react in our own dimension, as we are closer to people and, therefore, know better what has to be done. It should and will be a European dimension.