· Close the gender pay gap and address other barriers to women’s and other underrepresented workers’ participation in the labour market, including by encouraging employers to address workplace discrimination and offer reconciliation measures (such as childcare services), adapted workplaces, including ICT-based solutions, eAccessibility, diversity management, programmes for up-skilling and training, for the recognition of skills and qualification as well as mobility and development of consecutive careers. This should be achieved throug ...[+++]h means such as labour market regulations, parental leave regulations, and fiscal incentives. Action should be taken to ensure that taxation and benefit systems are aligned to make work pay (tapered benefit thresholds or targeted in-work fiscal incentives). The ESF, ERDF, the European Integration Fund (EIF), and European Migration and Asylum Fund should be made use of to achieve this;

The Commission will also examine the possibility of developing motivational incentives by encouraging, through common methodologies and guidelines, voluntary disclosure programmes, the correction of errors by taxpayers on line (especially if personalised internet pages are created) and the improvement of relationships between taxpayers and tax administrations.

Notes, echoing the work carried out by Mario Monti, that increases in public revenue linked to good economic performance have generally led to tax cuts; notes that taxation on labour should be reduced in order to increase European competitiveness; supports Mario Monti’s proposals for the establishment of a Tax Policy Group, which would bring together representatives from the Member States, as an important way of encouraging dialogue between European countries; invites the policy group to discuss primarily the framework for a tax system that would address environmental goals and support resource efficiency; welcomes the proposal for a ...[+++] directive on a common consolidated corporate tax base in the 2011 Commission work programme;

In this context, the Commission has proposed that the Heads of State and Government of both regions take concrete decisions to: (a) encourage Latin American countries to adopt sound and efficient policies to increase social cohesion by reducing poverty, inequalities and exclusion in the areas of democratic governance, social policies, public finance and fiscal policy; (b) encourage the international community, including and in particular the International financial Institutions (IFIs), to support these measures and to ensure th ...[+++]at reform programmes are carefully screened for their impact on social cohesion and social stability; and (c) intensify cooperation between the EU and Latin America in the field of social cohesion.

Promotional incentives have been introduced in the fields of public procurement (such as the introduction of a selection criterion whereby applicants have to prove their technical capacity to deal with environmental issues), financial support (subsidies for new EMAS registrations, tax breaks on purchases designed to improve environmental performance, reduced registration fees, etc.), technical support (phased implementation programmes specially designed ...[+++]for SMEs, etc.) and information support (customised information programmes, information campaigns aimed at specific interest groups and the general public, conferences and workshops, etc).

Cohesion countries invest considerable amounts towards overcoming their structural weaknesses in business RD. Large multi-year umbrella programmes under the Structural Funds still play an important role, but the programme approach is increasingly complemented by fiscal measures to stimulate business investment in RD. These are well established or being introduced in several Member States.