[...] and a large majority of the new opportunities in Europe are for part-time work.

[...] globalization can and should be a stimulus to European competitiveness.

How can the European economy grow? Typically, services and technology are the engines to growth in developed economies.

Yet increasingly, job creation will take place in small businesses, an start-ups are vital to the health of the economy.

Flexible government regulations. The « European model » needs a good overhaul, one that unleashes the forces necessary for growth while retaining an acceptable social safety net.

To complete successfully on a global scale, our mandate must be to think and act resolutely. Small, incremental steps can, perhaps, stop us from slipping farther behind. But as we head toward a new specific age, the old continent must seek a new vision. Europe needs to step forward with courage if it is to excel in the industries of tomorrow.

Newsweek - november 24
"A new vision for the old continent" by Daniel Vasella
 
 
[...] High payroll taxes and benefit costs make keeping full-time workers expensive. So she brings in temporaries -but they can work for only a limited number of days ; after that they must be permanently hired. Says de Menthon : « I am paralyzed. »
In broadest terms, the European Commission wants to foster a culture of entrepreneurship, promote more flexible hiring-and-firing practices, enhance job training, find more venture capital for new businesses and conjure up more opportunities for women and young people, [...]
 
To complete globally, European companies must get leaner and more nimble.
 
Done right, a corporate makeover will boost productivity and lead to more jobs.
 
Clinging to its manufacturing mind-set, continental Europe has been slow to cultivate « gazelles » -the small service and technologies companies that are diving job growth in the United States and Britain. In those countries, small firms create two out of every three new jobs- and account for more than half of the private work force.
 
[...] « You must ask the question: do Europeans want to employ people or pay them unemployment ? They would seem to want to pay low wages. In my opinion, that’s a strange choice . » The reason is that most Europeans don‘t perceive the United States, with its wide income gaps, as a model. Social cohesion is sometimes prized more than jobs.
 
Newsweek - november 24
"Looking for jobs" by Richard Ernsberger Jr.