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1. The Committee takes note of the Government's report which consists entirely of a set of documents and statistics. Bearing in mind the particular difficulty of assessing the application of a Convention which requires the formulation and implementation of a policy, the Committee would be grateful if the Government would in future follow the report form approved by the Governing Body for the provision of the necessary information.

2. The Committee notes that, in the context of a stagnation in the volume of employment, the unemployment rate has remained above 12 per cent, while the worrying features of the distribution of unemployment have been confirmed or have worsened, particularly in terms of the divide between the north (with an unemployment rate of 6.5 per cent in January 1998) and the south (22.4 per cent) and between men (9.4 per cent) and women (16.8 per cent), the situation of young people under the age of 25 (33.8 per cent) and the incidence of long-term unemployment (67.8 per cent of total unemployment).

3. In order to make up for the absence in the report of a presentation of the Government's employment policy, the Committee has referred to the national Employment Action Plan sent in April 1998 to the Council and the Commission of the European Communities. In the Action Plan, the Government sets out the successes of its economic policy, in terms of a rapid fall in the budget deficit and the containment of inflation, which it attributes to its policy of wage restraint agreed with the social partners in the Employment Pact of September 1996. The Government emphasizes that, with the adoption in April 1998 of a Medium-Term Economic and Financial Policy Programme for 1999-2001, employment measures have, for the first time, been adopted within the overall context of general economic and financial policies aimed at achieving high growth and combating the structural causes of unemployment, especially in the south. The Committee observes that the results obtained in re-establishing macroeconomic balances to meet the requirements of the European Pact for Stability and Growth have not so far led to an improvement in the employment situation. The Committee requests the Government to indicate the extent to which its monetary, budget and fiscal policies and wages and incomes policies, as well as the implementation of infrastructure development policies, have contributed to combating unemployment.

4. The Committee notes the Government's description of different labour market policy programmes, such as socially useful work and employment-training contracts. With reference to its previous requests, the Committee again asks the Government to provide in its next report any available assessment of the results of these programmes in terms of the effective and lasting integration of their beneficiaries in employment.