Doubt over EU jobs summit

Paris - An emergency summit on employment that EU leaders were slated to hold in early October has been postponed, a French government spokesperson said on Wednesday, although Italian officials said they expected the meeting to go ahead.

The summit in Italy, announced at the end of August as worries mounted over the sluggish pace of economic recovery in Europe, was postponed due to timing problems, said spokesman Stephane Le Foll.

Earlier, Benedetto Della Vedova, an undersecretary in the Italian Foreign Ministry, said the meeting was still being discussed.

"The summit has not yet formally been called and there has been no agenda yet defined," he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. "Maybe we could look at this in more detail in October when more widespread and more thorough examinations will be carried out on the preparation."

One official in Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's office said earlier on Wednesday the meeting would go ahead on October 8, but another prime ministerial aide later said the date was not definitively fixed.

"The summit will happen ... we will see about the date," the second aide said.

Another Italian government official said that the only concrete measure set for discussion was the "Youth Guarantee", a European Union programme intended to boost youth employment.

"It's difficult to imagine that any heads of state or government will be there if a relaunch of the Youth Guarantee is the only thing on the table," the official said. "At the moment, there's no other issue of substance."

EU leaders are due to meet at a European Council on October 23.