Cedefop Director James Calleja discussed issues related to unemployment, apprenticeships and labour-market intelligence at a meeting with the Greek Minister for Labour, Social Security and Welfare Ioannis Vroutsis on 17 December, in Athens.

The two sides agreed to further their collaboration by joint activities between Cedefop and OAED, the Greek employment agency, on measures against unemployment and on supporting low-skilled Greek citizens.

Mr Vroutsis presented ERGANI, a labour-market intelligence tool, which makes it possible to monitor employment opportunities, redundancies and salaries in a large number of occupations across various sectors. This enables the Ministry to plan short- and long-term measures to fight unemployment and to provide the right skills for jobs.

Mr Calleja informed the Minister about an international conference on apprenticeships, which will take place in Thessaloniki, in March 2014.