Besides presentations by Cedefop Director Aviana Bulgarelli and Ole Christensen, MEP and member of the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee, the workshop featured contributions by László Andor Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs and Inclusion; Director-General for Education and Culture Odile Quintin; Jorgen Ronnest of Business Europe; and Jozef Niemiec, Secretary of the European Trade Unions Confederation.
The audience, which contributed several questions and criticisms to the panel, included MEPs Rosario Crocetta, Sylvana Rapti and Elisabeth Schroedter; and many members of European and regional social partner organisations, including the CEEP and the Social and Economic Committee.
Aviana Bulgarelli presents Cedefop’s findings, flanked by Commissioner László Andor, MEP Ole Christensen, Jorgen Ronnest of Business Europe and Jozef Niemiec of the ETUC.
Ole Christensen said that the present crisis, which has affected all European countries, has raised some questions about how much further structural reforms need to go. “In some instances, the effect of flexicurity policies has been to lower mobility. But mobility between countries and sectors is crucial if we are to fill job vacancies”. (See interview, below).
Mobility was a theme also raised by Odile Quintin. “We must invest in initiatives that have stood the test of time. That is why President Barroso presented to the Parliament the large-scale ‘Youth on the Move’ initiative, which aims to make learning mobility a standard part of every degree, every career, and of lifelong learning.” She also drew attention to the issue of financing. Noting the large drop registered in in-company training between 1999 and 2005, she said this puts European competitiveness at risk. “We need investment in high-quality education and skills development even in times of financial constraints”.
Commissioner Andor particularly emphasised the value of integrating policies. “Skills are a cross-cutting priority. It will not make any sense to design education and training without knowing what skills people will need in tomorrow’s labour market. And we will not be able to tackle current unemployment without including education and training for all our citizens.” For this, he said “we need to integrate policies on long-term employment, social inclusion and global economic competitiveness”.
This is the idea behind the Europe 2020 Strategy, the successor to the Lisbon Strategy, which was announced the day after Cedefop’s workshop, 3 March, by President Barroso. The Strategy, as Commissioner Andor underlined “has the development of skills at its heart”. Referring to the New Skills for New Jobs initiative, to which Cedefop also contributed, the Commissioner noted its timing: “In hindsight”, he said, “the renewed emphasis on skills could not have come at a better moment”.
Aviana Bulgarelli presented findings from Cedefop’s forthcoming forecast on the supply and demand for skills up to 2020, observing that the figures reveal consistent changes across Europe. Low-qualified people have suffered disproportionately from the effects of the crisis, with employment of high-qualified people remaining high.
“We are seeing from our forecast that jobs employing highly-qualified people will rise by 2020 to one third of the total, and jobs requiring medium-level qualifications will rise to 50% of the total. These findings, along with demographic developments, are important for industrial policy, but clearly also for education, training and social policies”.
Speaking on behalf of the employers, Jorgen Ronnest stressed the need for more flexible learning paths. “Employers do their part to retain and improve skills, but SMEs in particular need more support to find funding for training, and to have less bureaucracy to deal with when offering apprenticeship programmes”.
The issue of financing was picked up by Jozef Niemiec of the ETUC: “If there is no investment, then skills development is simply not a priority”. Particularly if we look at the resources that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are devoting to skills development we will see that “the issue of financing training is crucial if Europe is to leave the present crisis behind”.
The forecast "Cedefop’s Skills supply and demand in Europe: medium-term forecast up to 2020", including national forecasts, was published in April.