Luxembourg Prime Minister, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, yesterday rejected a proposal for the European Union to slash its unemployment rate over five years. Mr Juncker told a meeting of the EU's advisory Economic and Social Committee that a European Commission proposal earlier yesterday for the bloc to cut its unemployment rate to 7 per cent from today's 10.8 per cent by 2002 would not be credible.

"This type of message, although worthy, is past its sell-by-date," Mr Juncker said. "People just simply won't believe it."

The Commission's target as well as other proposals on ways to get Europe's 18 million unemployed back to work will form the centrepiece of a planned EU Jobs Summit on November 20th and 21st.

Mr Juncker said a global target for cutting unemployment over a long period of time would serve no use, because those taking the decisions in November would not be around to answer to them.

Mr Juncker, who will chair the summit because Luxembourg currently holds the EU presidency, said he would be calling on his fellow leaders to endorse only those guidelines which would achieve intermediate goals.

"We want these guidelines to be concrete . . . where possible quantifiable . . . and verifiable," he said.

"We don't just want the EU to think about unemployment for one day on November 21st.

"On an annual basis, we have to come back to the guidelines to see what can be continued, what can be changed."