The United Nations will shortly adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), andmigration-related targets should be included, alongside targets in areas such as promoting decent work, youth employment, wage and social protection policies which can help countries of origin to create better economic opportunities at home.

Pierre Moscovici, Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, said: "Europe's economic outlook is a little brighter today than when we presented our last forecasts.

Therefore, we are now having population growth because all of those people who left Saskatchewan because of the poor economic environment and the declining population are coming home because of strong economics and some of our economic platform.

Their vision is one of economic progress, of prosperity, of infrastructure development, of economic development, economic opportunity and social progress.

- 2 - THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK The economic outlook for the Community in the current year is much less favourable than it appeared in autumn last year.

The Commission accordingly proposes that: - the role of its communication to the Ecofin Council meeting in March should be left unchanged; - the content of the communication to the Ecofin Council meeting in July should be developed; the communication will list the measures taken by the Member States pursuant to the guidelines contained in the most recent Annual Economic Report; on the basis of the new forecasts for the current year and for the following year, the communication will reassess the short-term and, if necessary, the medium-term outlook and will set out the Commission's views on the economic and budgetary policy guidelines ...[+++]to be applied in the year ahead; the communication will be transmitted to Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee; the social partners will be consulted by the Commission; in addition, the Commission requests the Council to ask the governments of the Member States to pass on the communication and any conclusions drawn by the Council to the national parliaments, in accordance with the spirit of Article 5 of the Decision on convergence, so that they can be discussed in the autumn debates on economic and budgetary policy at national level; - the procedure for drawing up and approving the Annual Economic Report should remain unchanged; the Report could certainly be reduced in length, but it would continue to be the Community's main economic policy reference document; the Commission considers it important that the final adoption of the Report should take place after the Council has discussed it in the light of the various opinions delivered; accordingly, there should be better coordination of the dates of the November and December meetings of Parliament and the Ecofin Council.