Since its launch in 1997, the European Employment Strategy (EES) has played a central role in coordinating the EU’s policies in order to create improved work for all. Its role has been underscored by the European Council on many occasions and it has become an essential tool to respond to one of EU citizens’ main preoccupations: more and better jobs. The EES is designed to give direction to and ensure co-ordination of the employment policy priorities to which Member States subscribe at EU level. Heads of State and Government agreed on a framework for action around common objectives and employment policy priorities.
This co-ordination of national employment policies at EU level is built around an annual process laid down in the EU Treaty revision of 1998, which was integrated in a renewable three-year cycle since the re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy in 2005.

The EES components are:
• Employment Guidelines, which are adopted every year by the Council upon a proposal from the Commission. The Guidelines reflect common priorities for Member States’ employment policies. Since 2005, they are part of the Integrated Guidelines for Growth and Jobs.
• National Reform Programmes, which Member States draw up in order to implement these Guidelines into national policy. Until 2005, the employment parts of these programmes were known as National Action Plans for Employment.
• Joint Employment Reports, adopted by the Commission and Council, which reviews the progress made at both national and community levels in response to the Employment Guidelines. Since 2005, the Joint Employment Report constitutes the employment chapter of the EU Annual Progress Report on the Lisbon Strategy.
• Country Specific Recommendations. The Council can also adopt, upon a proposal by the Commission, country- specific recommendations on employment policies which need to be considered by Member States in drawing up their National Reform Programmes. Programmes.

In its first decade, the EES has seen the EU’s employment rate increase from 60.7% to 64.3%, within which the employment rate for women has risen from 51.8% to 57.1% and the one for older workers (aged 55-64) from 35.7% to 43.5%. Even bigger improvements in the employment rates have been seen for those Member States that have benefited longest from the EES. Unemployment rates have varied over the ten years with big decreases prior to 2001, a rise between 2001 and 2004 — especially in the new Member States — and a decline after 2004. Structural reforms in labour markets seem to have borne fruit. This is reflected in a reduction of the long term unemployment rate from about 5% to 3.6% and shorter average periods of unemployment.