THE CHANCES OF THE EUROPEAN JOB MARKET - Foundation Office Greece and Cyprus
Event Reports
Susanna Vogt, Head of KAS Athens, welcomed the participants and gave an introduction to the topic. A European job market with flexible structures and mobility of labour might be a chance to reduce unemployment in Europe and especially in the crisis-ridden member states. Afterwards, Mariana Pirgoti welcomed the participants in the name of KKID. The aim of the roundtable would be the development of concrete proposals on how ‘one of the greatest problems’ in the European Union and in Greece might be solved. As Mariana Pirgoti noted, it would be especially the social and political consequences of the youth unemployment in the country, which have become more and more obvious in the last months.
At first, Raimund Becker outlined the experiences of the German Federal Employment Agency on youth unemployment, which would have been a crucial problem in Germany in the 1980s; many young Germans, seeking for job opportunities, would have left the country. But after the improvement of the economic situation a few years later, the majority of those young Germans would have returned home. This ‘circular migration’ would be advantageous both to the recipient countries, which can counter their shortage of skilled labour, and to the sending countries, which can temporarily reduce social costs. In particular, ‘circular migration’ would offer opportunities for people who are not able to find a job in their home country; they may acquire competences abroad, which will be valuable for them after returning home, e.g. language skills in the tourism sector. Thus, employment policies and agencies should support the mobility of labour. Last year, the German Federal Employment Agency has started a programme on mobility, with the aim to give young people from other countries the chance to start vocational training in Germany. In this context, the expert emphasised that the programme also includes measures to support the integration in Germany, e.g. by offering language courses and personal career talks as well as by simplifying the validation of high school and university degrees. However, Mr. Becker made clear that labour migration is no ‘panacea’, but only an additional chance to temporarily ease the harsh consequences of the recession in Greece.
Theodoros Ambatzoglou outlined the Greek perspective on the European job market. The expert stressed that the development on the Greek job market is strongly related to the general economic situation in the country. Therefore, there would be an enormous loss of jobs since the onset of the crisis in 2009, affecting in particular young Greeks up to the age of 25 years, less educated people and economically weaker regions. Eventually, Mr. Ambatzoglou briefly explained the European initiative against youth unemployment, a package of labour policies and measures, which has been established to ‘give hope’ to young people without jobs. During the Greek Council Presidency from January 2014, EU policies against unemployment would be at the top of the agenda. Furthermore, OAED would have expanded its offering in the last months, e.g. by the set-up of an information centre or by hosting events on the opportunities of the EURES-Network and migration in general.
The discussion, moderated by Eva Rindfleisch, the Coordinator of Job Market and Social Policy at KAS Berlin, dealt with questions on how social partners may get involved in Greek labour market policies, on EU programmes against unemployment, on the reform of the Greek education system in regard to current and future problems of the labour market, and on the cooperation of the EU member states in the fight against unemployment. Panagiotis Liargovas, Professor at the University of Peloponnese and Coordinator of the Parliamentary Budget Office, finally considered the results of the roundtable.
