The new European Social Fund

SOCIAL AGENDAn°37

Social Europe

06/2014ISSN 1682-7783

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EU growth and jobs strategy

A public consultation

24Traineeships

An EU quality framework

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Until the 31 October 2014, EU citizens have the opportunity to reply to the public online consultation launched by the European Commission on the first four years of the Europe 2020 strat-egy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - and on how to make sure that it acts as an effective post-crisis strategy for growth and jobs in Europe. This consultation will pave the ground for a mid-term review of the strategy in 2015.

As the first signs of overcoming the financial and economic crisis appear, it is crucial to re-focus on the long-term objectives of Europe 2020. This will help the EU Member States converge again, especially in terms of jobs and social equality.

Whatever the outcome of the Europe 2020 mid-term review, Member States have already been called upon to focus more on the Europe 2020 objectives, through two recent developments.

One is the European Semester process of economic governance, which is now taking place for the fourth year running. Through this collective process, the European Council sends cus-

tomised recommendations to each EU country on how to better implement the Europe 2020 strategy. The Member States later report on how they have taken these recommendations into account in their national budgets.

The on-going 2014 European Semester has been enriched by the introduction of a scoreboard which brings together and further refines key employment and social affairs indicators, which have a great impact on the EU’s overall capacity to benefit fully from the first signs of economic recovery.

The second development is the new EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for the years 2014-2020. It explicitly connects the dissemination and management of EU funds to the way the Europe 2020 strategy is being implemented in each country.

Investing in people is the key for Europe to restore its competitiveness on the world market. The new MFF reinforces the EU’s main financial instrument for doing just that – the European Social Fund. It will be more result-oriented than ever before.

For the first time, the European Commission will have the right to call upon Member States to review, in due course, their plans on how to spend ESF money - if they fail to act upon EU recom-mendations on how to achieve one or the other objective of the Europe 2020 strategy.

“Focusing more on long-term objectives”

Michel ServozDirector General of the European Commission’s Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion department

A magazine providing information on European employment and social policies, Social Agenda is published four times a year in English, French and German by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.Editor in chief: Michel Servoz, Director-General, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion – European Commission, B-1049 Brussels.Subscription is free on request – please fill in the registration form available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=740&langId=enNotice: Neither the European Commission, nor any person acting on its behalf, may be held responsible for the use to which information contained in this publication may be put, or for any errors which, despite careful preparation and checking, may appear. • © European Union, 2014Non-commercial reproduction authorised, subject to acknowledgement of the source.For any use or reproduction of photos which are not under European Union copyright, permission must be sought directly from the copyright holder(s).© Cover: Maud Millecamps – © European Union

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C O N T E N T S

EMPLOYMENT Taking EURES out of the grey area 6

RESTRUCTURINGAnticipation and good management 8

INCLUSIVE ENTREPRENEUR SHIP The missing entrepreneurs 10

EUROPE 2020 STRATEGYAdjusting the sights 12

SPECIAL FEATUREThe ESF and the EGF 14The new European Social Fund 15Nauras and Ebrahim, apprentice chefs 19The EGF digs its heels in 21What triggers EGF funding 23

TRAINEESHIPS An EU quality framework 24

OTHER VOICESPierre Baussand, Social Platform Director 26

INTERVIEWMichel Servoz, new Director General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, European Commission 27

European Health Insurance Card 28

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N E W S I N B R I E F

5 May: Public consultation on Europe 2020

The Commission launched an online public consultation on the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU’s long-term growth and jobs plan. The consultation runs until 31 October 2014 to gather the views of all interested people and organisations on how the strategy has been working for the past four years, and on what its focus should be in the coming years. It follows a 5 March communication taking stock of the Europe 2020 strategy, which showed that progress on meeting its five headline targets has been mixed (see p.12).

Promising sector: On what should the EU growth strategy focus beyond 2015?

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28 April: More cooperation with ILOEuropean Commissioner László Andor and ILO Director General Guy Ryder agreed to step up cooperation in the area of health and safety at work as a means to enhance synergy and promote consistency in the way occupational safety and health chal-lenges are addressed at global level, and so better address this

key challenge across the world. The better working conditions are, the more committed people can be to economic success. Improving working conditions can enhance efficiency and pro-ductivity within the enterprise, and it can boost competitiveness in broader terms.

24 April: Deterioration in worker satisfactionWhile just over half of European workers perceive working condi-tions in their country to be good (53 %), a majority (57 %) never-theless think that their working conditions have deteriorated in the last 5 years, according to a Eurobarometer survey which looks at

how the quality of work has been affected by the crisis. Although most workers are satisfied with their own working conditions (77 % on average in the EU), there is a very wide disparity across Member States, ranging from 94 % in Denmark to 38 % in Greece.

24 April: Improving worker rights enforcement

The EU’s Council of Ministers adopted a new Directive to ensure the better application at national level of EU citizens’ right to work in another Member State. The new rules aim to bridge the gap between rights and reality and will make it easier for people working or look-ing for a job in another country to exercise their rights in practice.

Cross-border travelling: A new EU law ensures the better application at national level of EU citizens’ right to work in another Member State.

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10 April: 26.2 million unemployedThe EU population aged 15 to 74 can be classified into three groups: in 2013, there were 216.4 million persons in employment, 26.2 mil-lion unemployed and 137.2 million economically inactive. Among

those in employment, 43.7 million were part-time workers, of which 9.9 million (23 % of part-time workers) are underemployed, mean-ing they wished to work more hours and were available to do so.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

9 April: Preventing undeclared workThe European Commission proposed the creation of a European Platform to improve cooperation at EU level in order to prevent and deter undeclared work more effectively

(see Social Agenda n°36). Undeclared work is a phenomenon that causes serious damage to working conditions, fair com-petition and public budgets.

8 April: Youth Guarantee conference At a “Youth Guarantee: Making it Happen” conference hosted by the European Commission in Brussels, President Barroso and Commissioner Andor gathered national and interna-tional organisations to discuss progress in tackling youth unemployment through the Youth Guarantee (see Social Agenda n°36). The conference also looked at how EU coun-tries are implementing the schemes, as recommended by the Commission.

Looking for a job: How are EU countries implementing the EU Youth Guarantee?

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7 April: Managing stress at work The European Agency for Safety at Health at Work (EU-OSHA) launched the “Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress” campaign to raise awareness about the psychological, physical and social

risks linked to stress at work. Stress is one of the most frequently reported work-related health problem in Europe and is believed to be the cause of the majority of all lost working days.

4 April: First signs of improvement for the Roma EU action has put Roma integration firmly on the political agenda across Europe. The first signs of improvement in the lives of Roma are slowly starting to show, says a new European Commission report which assesses progress made in the 28 EU countries since 2011 under the EU framework for Roma

integration. They identify both positive examples and areas for further efforts from Member States. The assessment comes as local, national and EU politicians gather with representatives of civil society to discuss advances on Roma integration at the third EU-level Roma Summit

10 March: New EU fund for the most deprived

The new EU Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) was adopted for the years 2014-2020. It will provide over € 3.8 billion to help Europe’s most deprived. It will help Member States to provide a broad range of non-financial material assis-tance including food, clothing and other essential goods for personal use such as shoes, soap and shampoo to people most in need. It will ensure that up to 4 million people will benefit from immediate assistance.

Food: A new EU fund will provide material, food and other forms of assistance to potentially 4 million people by 2020.

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EMPLOYMENT

Taking EURES out of the grey area The European Commission proposes a new law

A need for clarity: EU countries are not transparent enough about the state of their respective labour markets. ©

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On 17 January 2014, the European Commission put forward a proposal for a Regulation (EU law directly applicable in the Member States) which would turn the EURES network into a more pro-active cross-EU job placement tool.

EURES is a cooperation network set up in 1993 between the European Commission and the public employment services of the EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. It offers a service to jobseekers and employers willing to benefit from free movement of work. The proposed Regulation gives EURES a comprehensive legal framework and reinforces its role in the context of the free movement of workers.

More visible

EURES would be made more visible. Presently, it has more than 1200 advisers that are in daily contact with jobseekers and employers across Europe. However, information about

EURES needs to be mainstreamed. At their first encounter with a public employment service, job seekers and employ-ers do not receive systematically all the information they need about it.

For those job-seekers and employers who have shown an interest in moving within Europe, EURES support services need to be strengthened to assist with matching, recruitment and placement. This includes information on active labour market measures and on social security rights in all the coun-tries involved.

The EURES on-line portal has jumped from 175 000 regis-tered jobseekers in 2007 to 1 100 000 in 2013. However, it has limited matching capability between job vacancies and CVs at European level. This is due to difficulties in reconcil-ing the data sent by the national job vacancy systems of the EURES countries.

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New functionalities

The European Commission is developing a European classifi-cation of skills, competences, qualifications and occupations. However, for the time being, Member States are not obliged to ensure mapping between their national systems and this European classification. Yet such mapping is crucial for auto-mating the portal’s matching capacity.

There is also a lack of transparency on behalf of all Member States about the state of their respective labour markets. Only part of the national pool of vacancies (around 30 %) and CVs of each country is accessible via EURES. As it stands, the infor-mation exchange and cooperation between the Member States on national labour shortages and surpluses is inefficient.

New partners

The new law would open up EURES to other partners: tempo-rary work agencies, non-governmental organisations, trade unions, industrial and employers’ associations – so long as they fulfil all (or a combination of) specified roles and adhere to a set of rules (e.g. providing services to jobseekers for free, transparency, equal opportunities…).

The European Commission would act as the European Coordination Office providing common information, training activities, tools and guidance – and develop and maintain the EURES portal. Member States would set up National Coordination offices providing general support and assistance to all organi-sations operating for EURES and with their counterparts in the other countries, as well as with the European Coordination Office.

Every job seeker and employer registering with employment services would be made aware of EURES and, if interested in moving, would receive a clear “EURES offer” for further assis-tance. The Member States would make available all the job vacancies they publish nationally, including those only avail-able at local or regional level at present, as well as vacancies from private employment services and other organisations.

The EURES portal would continue to receive CVs posted directly by jobseekers but would also receive those made

available through organisations. The proposed rules would allow for an effective matching process at European level between job vacancies and candidates.

Free movement

As a result, EURES would be better placed to tap into the cross-Europe mobility potential and increase the trans-parency of the European labour market. At present, about 700 000 people move annually, on average, to work in another European country. Studies show that about 2.9 mil-lion EU citizens would ideally like to do so in the following twelve months.

Fundamentally, the aim of the EURES reform is to increase the exchange of information among Member States, par-ticularly on surpluses and shortages on national labour markets. This intelligence would place EURES in a better position to organise and coordinate placement and recruit-ment activities. It would also help the EURES countries to include mobility policies as an integral part of their social and employment policies.

All in all, the proposed law introduces much more clarity: a shared vision on intra-EU labour mobility, a clear operational framework for coordination between Member States, system-atic and intensive information sharing, common tools and a clear distribution of responsibilities. Jobseekers and employers would be able to make an informed choice on mobility and to better prepare it, thus increasing the chances of successful integration in the work place and in the host country. It would also contribute to achieving the EU aim of having 75 % of its workforce in employment by 2020.

More information:http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?langId=en&catId=89&newsId=2014&furtherNews=yes

The EURES job mobility portal: eures.europa.eu

Cross-EU mobility potential: Greek doctors and nurses meet representatives of German hospitals.

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RESTRUCTURING

Anticipation and good managementThe European Commission has adopted a quality framework

The broader impact: Considering the industrial and social impact of restructuring on the cities and regions affected.

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More than 16 000 restructuring operations have taken place since 2002 in the EU, with a net job loss of over 2 mil-lion. During the third quarter of 2013 alone, 250 cases of restructuring operations (company reorganisation, closures, mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, outsourcing, reloca-tion…) were recorded, involving 57 081 job losses against 27 792 job gains.

On 13 December 2013, the European Commission adopted an EU Quality Framework for anticipation of change and restruc-turing - a further step in the work it has undertaken for several years now on this issue, including the publication of a Green Paper in January 2012 (see Social Agenda n°29).

Based on real experiences of companies, the Quality Framework contains guidelines in the form of individual cards which illustrate ways of anticipating restructuring and of man-aging specific restructuring processes: strategic long-term monitoring of market developments; continuous mapping of jobs and skills needs; measures for individual employ-ees (e.g. training, career counselling, assistance to facilitate professional transitions); involvement of external actors at an early stage (e.g. public authorities, universities, training centres and the supply chain); making full use of EU struc-tural funds (e.g. the European Social Fund and the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, see the special feature p. 14)

in the concerned regions, in order to promote job creation and transitions.

The Quality Framework shows to what extent the employment and social dimensions of structural change have a bearing on the long-term competitiveness of companies. It consid-ers the broader industrial and social impact of restructur-ing on the cities and regions affected, stressing the role of industrial and regional policies in anticipating adjustment to structural change.

Mass redundancies

Anticipation and management are the key words of the European Commission’s approach to restructuring - the only way of avoiding mass redundancies and the decline of entire regions or the relocation of entire industries, often with a heavy cross-border impact. They facilitate economic recon-version and successful human transitions towards economic areas which will generate significant job opportunities in the years to come, such as the green economy, the digital and health sectors.

Anticipating and managing restructuring better is also a means of avoiding heavy societal costs which have to be borne by public authorities, particularly as regards unemployment,

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Informing and consulting workers: EU legislation in this area could be

reviewed in the near future.

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increased inequality and poverty. These costs weigh greatly on public finances and can hamper economic recovery.

The public sector too

One of the novelties of the Quality Framework is that it covers the issue of public sector restructuring, which the governments of some EU countries are reluctant to address.

At a time when public sector employees are gradually los-ing their specific status, there are less and less reasons to exclude them from attempts to improve the way restructur-ing is managed in the public sector - especially when the provision of public services moves from public monopo-lies towards concession systems, or when concessions are renewed.

The public sector employs about 25 % of the EU workforce and plays a pivotal role in shaping the economy and society.

Consulting workers

In January 2013, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution linking up the issue of restructuration manage-ment with that of informing and consulting workers, including in restructuring situations: an area which is largely covered by EU legislation.

Indeed, several EU laws, adopted since 1975, cover the pro-tection of employees in the event of collective redundancies, transfers of undertakings, the insolvency of their employer as well as the permanent information and consultation of workers at national and transnational level.

The Quality Framework is a supplementary step in this direc-tion. The Commission will monitor the way the Member States and social partners implement it and take stock of the whole exercise in 2016.

In the process, it will look into the possibility of consolidating or recasting the information and consultation directives at

national level, with a view to improving their effectiveness and coherence, particularly as regards the definitions of “informa-tion” and “consultation”.

More information:http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=782&langId=en

The steel and automotive industries show the way

An example of restructuring good practices are the Steel Action Plan which the European Commission adopted on 11 June 2013 and the CARS 2020 Action Plan which it launched in November 2012.

Both aim to help EU countries use the European Social Fund for workers’ retraining and reskilling, and facilitate dialogue between social partners in view of reaching an agreement on temporary initiatives to maintain jobs.

The Steel Action Plan also intends to help industry play an active role to remedy skill gaps and shortages, as well as involving trade unions and regional stakeholders when envisaging to restructure.

CARS 2020 identifies good practice and promotes an anticipative restructuring approach, in consultation with representatives of the automotive-intensive regions, of the employment authorities and of the sector’s stakeholders, including the social partners. It encourages the EU countries concerned to make use of labour flexibility schemes in support of the suppliers who might need additional time to find new clients, following a closure or downsizing of an automotive plant.

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INCLUSIVE ENTREPRENEUR­SHIP

The missing entrepreneurs Helping governments make it easier for under-represented and disadvantaged people to create businesses

Doors shut: Ethnic minorities and immigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to be forced to rely on non-bank and informal finance.

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Entrepreneurship creates jobs and growth but not all social groups have an equal opportunity to succeed.

Women are half as likely to start businesses as men. Young people are only one-third as likely as adults to be self-employed and their businesses are less likely to survive. Seniors who retire as employees can lack entrepreneurship-specific skills and networks. Ethnic minorities and immigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to be forced to rely on non-bank and informal finance. And people with disabilities may be constrained by state welfare policies that are poorly adapted to self-employment.

Many inspiring policy responses have been put in place at national, regional and local levels across Europe. Sweden has reformed the social security system for self-employed workers. Austria’s Mingo Migrant Enterprises provides con-sultancy support to immigrants and ethnic minorities. The Flanders region in Belgium provides training, advice and coaching to unemployed people starting businesses and guar-antees continued access to social benefits for 18 months.

Two regions of the Czech Republic have created tailored consulting, business development and bank loan application assistance for female entrepreneurs.

However, much more can be done, conclude the Organisation for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission, in their 2013 report on “The Missing Entrepreneurs”.

Analysis and policy guidance

Indeed, to better understand the challenges and inspire policy makers from existing experience, the European Commission and the OECD are collaborating in a series of annual reports, policy briefs, good practice compendiums, policy reviews and capacity-building seminars. As a result, the data collection and analysis capacity of the OECD is combined with the European Commission’s connections with the authorities of the EU coun-tries and its operational funds, such as the European Social Fund (see p.14) and the European programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI, see Social Agenda n°35).

>>Constrained: Some state welfare policies are poorly

adapted to disabled people’s self-employment.

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The 2013 “Missing Entrepreneurs” report contains a series of key recommendations focused on building a supportive institu-tional environment, improving entrepreneurship skills, facilitat-ing access to finance, and improving policy delivery. It also brings together dispersed data on entrepreneurship activities and bar-riers for disadvantaged groups, analyses the main policy issues and gives inspiring policy examples from each EU Member State.

“The project is not so much about new data collection”, explains Jonathan Potter, Senior Economist at the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Local Development, who supervised the preparation and editing of the annual report. “It is about bringing together information that does exist and putting it into one reference document. Employment and unemployment data are easy to get but there is a gap in information on what the rates of business creation for different social groups are and how their businesses fare“.

The present OECD-Commission conventions in this area run until 2015. However, the avenue of greater understanding and more action for entrepreneurship and self-employment of dis-advantaged and under-represented groups, is particularly under-explored. “There are enough topics and angles to address to carry on well beyond this deadline”, underlines Marco Fantini, Deputy Head of the Sectorial Employment challenges, Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship service at the European Commission. Especially in view of the fact that, to return to pre-crisis EU employment levels, approximately 4 million jobs are needed.

More information:

Supporting entrepreneurs and the self-employed http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=952&langId=en

Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion - publications catalogue on entrepreneurshiphttp://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?pager.offset=0&catId=738&langId=en&advSearchKey=entrepreneur&mode=advancedSubmit&langId=en&search=Search

The Missing Entrepreneurs - Policies for inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe (18/12/2013) http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=7685&type=2&furtherPubs=yes

OECD LEED Programme (Local Economic and Employment Development)http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/

Inspiring entrepreneur

Veronica Hedenmark, from Gothenburg, Sweden, founded three companies from 1996 onwards: VH Assistants, VH Action and VH Kids. All three provide personal assistance for children, youth and adults with disabilities. Today, these companies have more than 600 employees altogether across Sweden.

Veronica was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a congenital bone disorder characterised by brittle bones. By the time that she had turned 9 years old, she had already suffered 152 bone fractures. Despite her condition, Veronica had a very social upbringing and enjoyed attending public school.

However, upon graduating high school, she was left confused and insulted when the Social Insurance Office offered her an early retirement pension, implying that she would never be able to work.

Today, in addition to running successful businesses, Veronica is a successful advocate for people with disabilities and is a sought after speaker. In 2008 she was appointed ambassadress of the Swedish Minister for Enterprise and was a finalist for Making Prize. She won the Compass Rose in 2009, the King’s award for young leaders and was named by Business World magazine as one of the 100 Most Powerful leaders under the age of 40.

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EUROPE 2020 STRATEGY

Adjusting the sightsThe EU is not on track to meet its employment and social policy targets but it has sharpened its tools

Divergent: The divergence between EU countries is clearly visible in the rates of youth unemployment.

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On 5 May 2014, the European Commission launched an online public consultation on Europe 2020, the EU’s strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The consultation will be open until 31 October. Its aim is to draw lessons from the first four years of the strategy.

One of the novelties of the Europe 2020 strategy, when it was adopted in 2010, was that the EU countries collectively decided to try and meet quantifiable employment, education, poverty, research and climate targets.

In particular, they aimed to have at least 75 % of people aged 20-64 in employment, to reduce the school drop-out rates to below 10 % and increase the share of young people with a third-degree or diploma to at least 40 % and to ensure 20 million fewer people are at risk of poverty or social exclu-sion. Each country then translated these headline EU targets into individual national targets, based on its own starting point.

Four years later, the EU as a whole is not on track to meet its employment and poverty reduction goals. In fact, results and forecasts at Member State level vary widely from one country to another in these areas.

Divergences

Since 2010, imbalances or divergence within EU countries and between them – the southern and peripheral countries, on one

hand, and the northern and central ones, on the other - have increased in the area of employment and social affairs.

A stock-taking Communication published by the European Commission on 5 March 2014 confirms that Member States’ focus has clearly been on emergency crisis manage-ment rather than on meeting the long-term goals of the Europe 2020 strategy.

EU governance

However, the Europe 2020 strategy has had a structuring impact on the development of EU-level economic and social governance and on its financial framework.

In 2010, a “European Semester” process was put in place. It leads the Heads of state and governments to send recom-mendations to each EU country at the beginning of summer on how to better implement the EU 2020 strategy. Each Member State must later report back on the way it has taken them into account when preparing its own budget for the following year.

And at the end of 2013, the EU adopted the 2014-2020 EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), which conditions the availability of EU funds to the way Member States are implementing the Europe 2020 strategy. For the first time, the European Commission can now ask a Member State to

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Internet consultation: EU citizens can air their views on how the EU’s Europe 2020

strategy, launched in 2010, has worked so far.

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adapt its operational programmes in due course to European Semester recommendations.

The European Semester is now in its fourth year. And while the previous MFF (2007-2013) had been conceived well before the Europe 2020 strategy, the new MFF, strongly linked to the strategy, is fully in place.

Spill-over effects

All EU countries have undertaken or are preparing reforms in many employment and social areas in all EU countries. However, the problem lies with the degree of progress, which varies considerably across policy areas and between Member States.

Employment and social problems that are not sufficiently addressed in one country have a knock-on and spill-over effect on the more resilient ones. This in turn makes for reduced aggregate demand, eroded confidence and contamination via the financial markets.

To better grasp the social and employment impact of the cri-sis and prevent such spill-over effects from happening, the on-going 2014 European Semester has been enriched with a new scoreboard which brings together key employment and social data (see box). The Scoreboard will allow for better and earlier identification of major employment and social trends and, there-fore for swifter action.

Thanks to the 2014 Scoreboard, the divergence between EU coun-tries is clearly visible in the rates of unemployment, of youth unemployment and of young people who are neither in employ-ment nor in training or in education. Greater divergence within the euro area, compared to the EU as a whole, is also apparent as far as household income and inequalities are concerned. And the poverty rates have increased in some euro zone countries while remaining steady in others.

Crisis exit

As the first signs of overcoming the crisis begin to appear, addressing country-specific and intra-EU employment and social

imbalances is becoming crucial for the quality and speed of each country’s recovery.

This entails re-focusing on the Europe 2020 objectives. The more cohesion there is inside and between EU countries, the more and the earlier each Member State will benefit from the first symp-toms of recovery.

To take part in the public consultation: http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/public-consultation/index_en.htm

A scoreboard for employment and social data

An EU employment and social developments scoreboard was created at the end of 2013. It consists of five indicators of trends in EU countries that can severely undermine employment, social cohesion and human capital: unemployment, youth unemployment and the rate of those not in education, employment or training; household disposable income, the at risk-of-poverty rate and income inequalities.

It is an analytical tool which brings together data which the European Commission has been collecting from different sources, giving it more visibility and impact.

The Scoreboard was first published in the 2013 Joint (European Commission and EU Council of Ministers) Employment Report, one of the documents which serve as a basis for the European Semester (see main article).

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SPECIAL F E AT U R E

The ESF and the EGF Social Agenda is carrying on its review of the 2014- 2020 EU Multiannual Financial Framework

ESF (European Social Fund), EGF (European Globalisation Adjustment Fund)… In many ways, those two EU funds are very different. The ESF was created at the inception of the European Economic Community, in 1957. It represents an important part of the EU budget and amounts to more than € 80 billion for 2014-2020. The EGF was only created in 2007 and it is funded by money left over at the end of each year in the EU budget, within a ceiling of € 150 million per year.

Yet the EGF and the ESF are complementary. The EGF is designed to increase employability and ensure the rapid rein-tegration of redundant workers into employment through active labour market measures, while the ESF is the major instrument for promoting employment in the EU.

Different time perspectives

The complementarity of the two funds lies in their ability to address these issues from two different time perspectives. The EGF provides tailor-made assistance to redundant workers in response to a specific European-scale mass redundancy event, within two years after a country has applied for it.

As for the ESF, it supports strategic, long-term goals (e.g. increasing human capital, promoting innovation) through pre-programmed multi-annual programmes, the resources of which cannot normally be reallocated to deal with crisis situations caused by mass redundancies. However, it also provides half of the available funding for the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) which funds direct and immediate support to young people neither in employment nor in education or training, in those areas most affected youth unemployment. The YEI is in fact managed via the ESF.

EGF and ESF measures are sometimes used to complement each other to provide both short-term and longer-term solu-tions. The decisive criterion is the potential of the available instruments to effectively help workers, and it is up to the EU countries to select and programme the instruments and actions best suited to achieving their objectives.

Whether they choose the ESF or the EGF, in both cases the Member States have to top up the EU funds with national funding. But of course, between the ESF and the EGF, there is a huge difference in the amounts of money involved.

Effective help: EU funds effectively help workers, in the short term or in a more strategic, medium-to-long term approach.

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The new European Social Fund Andriana Sukova-Tosheva and Peter Stub Jørgensen, European Social Fund Directors at the European Commission, explain what is new about the 2014-2020 vintage

Reaching an agreement on the European Social Fund (ESF) required a great number of “trilogue” discussions between the EU Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the European Commission…

When the Commission drafted its proposal in 2011, we knew that there would be tough political discussions on some of the novelties it contained: macro-economic con-ditionalities, performance reserve, ex-ante conditionalities, the Youth Employment Initiative (see box p.18).

Macro-economic conditionalities?

They relate to the macro-economic stability of the economy of each EU country. They ensure that EU funds are focused on achieving the targets of the EU’s Europe 2020 strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (see p.12). For the first time, the European Commission can now ask a Member State to change its operational programmes and adapt them to recommendations sent to that particular country by the EU as a result of the European Semester economic govern-ance process.

What about the performance reserve?

It introduces the new principle of result orientation into EU cohesion policy. This implies that a certain percentage of the overall spending for priority axes and operational programmes be put aside until a mid-term evaluation is carried out. If the milestones are met, then the money set aside goes automatically to those axes and programmes. If they are not met, the money may go to other priority axes and operational programmes, in the same Member State, which are really having an impact.

And ex-ante conditionalities?

These are new provisions which actually ensure that EU funding is focused on results. They are a combination of requirements: an appropriate regulatory framework, effec-tive policies with clear objectives and a sufficient admin-istrative or institutional capacity. Ex-ante conditionalities represent a strong incentive for EU countries to ensure the effective delivery of Europe 2020 objectives and targets through the ESF and the other European Structural and

More participation: Women’s labour market participation and day-care facilities for children are now ESF investment priorities.

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Investment (ESI) funds. They are key to ensuring that all institutional and strategic policy arrangements are in place for effective investment.

And what about the Youth Employment Initiative?

This was a “hot” issue, not only because it was integrated in the regulations at a time when discussions on the draft Commission proposals had already started, but also because of its high political profile and the technical nature of the different elements that were negotiated. But in the end, we succeeded in preserving almost intact our initial pro-posal. This is a dedicated support for young people, but also for EU countries in implementing their Youth Guarantee Implementation plans.

Pre-financing was also hotly debated…

Yes, the co-legislators also happen to be the budgetary authorities! A difficult agreement was reached on how much initial pre-financing should go to the Member States and how much pre-financing should be cleared on an annual basis. The main thing is that any money that is given is spent on time and contributes to effective results rather than being stored somewhere without being used.

Are you happy with the ESF Regulation as adopted in November 2013 by Council and Parliament?

The Commission put forward its proposals in 2011. In the meantime, the Heads of State and governments introduced additional elements, such as the Youth Employment Initiative

in favour of young people who are neither in employment, education or training, or the SME initiative. At the begin-ning of European integration, the ESF represented half of European funds. Since the introduction of a European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), its relative share has been declin-ing. The ESF 2014-2020 puts an end to this decline. There is now a minimum share of ESF funding within the EU cohesion policy. Because the overall EU budget has been reduced, we pushed all the more for result-orientation and for the added value of EU spending. We also promoted simplification: easing the administrative burden for the beneficiaries and reducing the risk of error for managing authorities.

Could you expand on the issue of simplification?

We are switching focus from process to results. It’s a small revolution called “simplified costs options” which was introduced in 2007 for the ESF and European Regional Development Fund. It was so successful in some Member States that it has been expanded in scope as well as to all ESI Funds. Simplified costs options will allow Member States and fund managers to focus on what they are actu-ally doing rather than how they are doing it. Until now, they had to keep evidence of even small expenditure like bus tickets, telephone bills… With the simplified costs options, if for example providing training in a particular school costs on average € 100 euros, the EU will reimburse on that basis and will only check how many people effectively completed the training and how the average cost was calculated. That removes a lot of error sources and bureaucracy and allows people to concentrate on the outcome (training peo-ple) rather than on managing the funds. We also have the

Result oriented: Because the EU budget has been reduced, the European Commission pushed all the more for result-orientation and for the added value of EU spending (Andriana Sukova-Tosheva).

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performance framework through which we now measure what is produced as a result of our intervention: not how much money we put into it but how many people actually obtain better qualifications and manage to find a job. So it’s the results that matter. Indicators play a very big role there: when you start measuring and setting quantifiable targets that you can reach, you know whether you are successful or not.

So the focus is now on results rather than processes?

Yes. We now have a new concept: the “Joint action plan”. The Commission says to a Member State: “Tell us what you want to achieve, e.g. raise the education level of a certain cohort of young people. We don’t check how you do it. What we do care about is setting up some targets, taking action and measuring what has been achieved and if you reach your targets you will be paid accordingly, according to an agreed formula”.

Has the Europe 2020 strategy reinforced the ESF?

Yes. We are now going for thematic concentration: we try to focus all the efforts and money on certain key priori-ties in each Member State, in line with Europe 2020 and the relevant EU recommendations (the European Semester, see p.12) so that there are visible results. That’s how we can prove the added-value for European spending and contribute

to the achievement of the Europe 2020 objectives. This strong link with the overall EU strategy is new, with all the structural investment funds moving in the same direction.

Could you specify what reaching the Europe 2020 targets means for the ESF?

To reach the employment target, Europe has to provide support for people to improve their employability. This is reflected in the ESF investment priority for balanc-ing out private and professional life, in order to increase the participation of women in the labour market, as well as through an investment priority focusing on day-care facilities for their children. Another example relates to the capacity of the public administration to function in a modern society. In some EU countries, there are deficien-cies in the services delivered by the public authorities. The ESF can be used for capacity-building: e.g. funding the training of lawyers in fiscal matters. An efficient public administration is part of the ex-ante conditionalities we talked about earlier on.

Getting the Member States to involve other actors in managing EU funds is also an important part of the new ESF?

Yes, the more you involve your partners and stakeholders, the more ownership you will get. In the process, you will ensure a

Conditional: An efficient public administration is part of the conditions for receiving ESF funding, which can be used for capacity-building: e.g. funding the training of lawyers in fiscal matters (Peter Stub Jørgensen).

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better and more transparent performance. The Commission has adopted a European code of conduct on partnership. It specifies what kind of partnerships Member States need to set up in order to draw up their partnership agreement , how to involve them in the monitoring committees and in the evaluation of the operational programmes. In a democratic society, everybody should be involved in the overall spending of the EU budget, which stems from the contribution of every single taxpayer. We have always had partnerships but now it is done in a more systematic way. It permeates the entire process, from the concept and the first ideas to the drafting of the proposal and the finalisation of the agreement.

Is everything on track for the new ESF to become operational?

The new ESF regulation entered into force on 22 December 2013, which means that the deadline for the European Commission to receive all partnership agreements was 22 April 2014. Then Member States have three months to submit their operational programmes to the Commission. However, you must bear in mind that the 2007-2013 ESF is still pretty much active. Right now, we have have spent only two thirds of the money avail-able for the previous programming period: we still have 25 bil-lion euros to pay out this year, next year and the year after.

2014-2020: some of the novelties• More than € 80 billion: A critical mass of human capital investment will be ensured through a minimum

guaranteed share of the ESF within the cohesion policy funding in each Member State. More than € 80 billion (in current prices) will be invested in Europe’s people over the next 7 years;

• 20 % to social inclusion: Allocating at least 20 % of the ESF allocation to social inclusion will mean that people in difficulties and those from disadvantaged groups will get more support to have the same opportunities as others to integrate into the labour market;

• Mainstreaming gender equality: Promoting equality between women and men and equal opportunities for all without any discrimination will be integrated in all actions and also supported through specific initiatives;

• Youth: A greater emphasis is placed on combating youth unemployment. The Youth Employment Initiative will help young people not in employment, education or training in regions experiencing youth unemployment rates above 25 %. At least € 6.4 billion (in current prices), half of which from the ESF, will come in support of Member States’ efforts to put their Youth guarantee implementation plans in practice;

• Concentrating funding for achieving results: the ESF will focus its interventions on a limited number of priorities in order to ensure a sufficiently high critical mass of funding to make a real impact in addressing Member States’ key challenges;

• Transnational cooperation: Enhanced support will be provided by the Commission through a common framework and an EU-wide platform for exchange of experience, mutual learning and capitalisation of results;

• Innovation: Greater support will be provided to social innovation, i.e. testing and scaling up innovative solutions to address social, employment and education needs;

• Partnership: The ESF will be implemented in close cooperation between public authorities, social partners and bodies representing civil society at national, regional and local levels throughout the whole programme cycle;

• Simplification: The European Social Fund will be at the forefront of innovative managing rules to simplify implementation of projects. The European Commission is helping Member States to simplify ESF implementation in order to focus more on the results and make ESF easier and safer for the beneficiaries.

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Nauras and Ebrahim, apprentice chefs Learning cooking and life skills through a course backed by the ESF

Increasing young people’s opportunitites: Nauras is from Iraq, Ebrahim from Iran but both found asylum in Germany and trained as chefs in France thanks to a German programme co-funded by the ESF.

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Nauras comes from Iraq. She left Baghdad when she was 7, when her neighbourhood was bombed. She lived in Jordan for five years and moved to Germany when she was 13. She missed the sun, had to learn the language and to write from left to right. When she was 15, she worked as a barmaid to make a bit of money. The opportunity to train and become a chef came from a job centre.

Ebrahim is from Iran, which he left when he was 17, during his military service. His mother helped him escape. He crossed Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia on foot for 21 days. He met up with his brother in Italy. He had not seen him

for 5 years. His brother drove him to Germany. His early days there were tough. He had to wait several years for his work permit and he was not allowed to study. Then he had an interview with the same job centre as Nauras.

Both Ebrahim and Nauras live in Koblenz, Germany, and were given the opportunity to do a traineeship in Bordeaux, France.

Over to Nauras:

“I was sceptical. It seemed too good to be true. I did the trainee ship in Bordeaux for a few weeks and I loved it!

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It taught me a great deal. I learnt about certain ways of working and trying different approaches to cooking. I always loved baking and making desserts. But the project enabled me to learn that there are lots of other things that interest me in the kitchen. Every time I prepare an ingredient, I think about its flavour and the way I could use it in a recipe. I love to discreetly observe the customers’ reaction when they taste my dishes, especially when I’ve made something new or unu-sual. I am also careful to present the dishes well in general. I am a real perfectionist. I try to motivate my colleagues to get them to do the same. The kitchen team is like a family. Everyone has adopted me, even though it is a male-dominated environment. Everyone agrees on how good my chocolate cake is. But the recipe is a secret! I’ve had a German passport for two years now but I still don’t feel completely German. When people ask where I am from, I always instinctively want to say ‘Iraq’. But this is more of an emotional issue because I do really like living in Germany. I speak German and my friends speak German. I appreciate all that my host country has done for me. I’m the first to support the German national team in football matches!”.

Ebrahim adds:

“My interview with the job centre was a shock, but a posi-tive one. The moment everything clicked was when I did the traineeship in Bordeaux. All of a sudden, I knew I had found my way. I was certain. I was proud. I was going to be able to be a role model for my son, who was born in Germany. The thing I like the most about the training I received is the

confidence people have in me: they believed in my abili-ties. And the most satisfying thing, when I experiment with new things in the kitchen, new combinations of flavours, is when customers enjoy my dish creations. I love making special dishes from scratch and impressing customers. My life is here now, even though my heart is still in Iran. I had a very happy childhood. I have good memories of my home country. My father still lives there. I went to Iran a few years ago. The government has given up looking for me. I will go back definitely…. And maybe open a hotel there, why not… But the minute I am focusing on my training, I want to travel and to learn new things in Asia (China or Japan). I love the way they sculpt fruit and vegetable and how they cook shellfish, crustaceans and fish. I still have a lot to learn”.

Taken from:“Seven lives – on the road to success with the European Social Fund”, ISBN 978-92-79-30126-1

Video:http://ec.europa.eu/esf/main.jsp?catId=564&langId=en&portraitId=258

More information:http://ec.europa.eu/esf/main.jsp?catId=564&langId=en

Integrating the labour market in Germany via France

Nauras and Ebrahim benefited from MYK4international, an innovative qualification project in the hotel and catering sector. Its aim is to increase the training and employment opportunities of disadvantaged young people through guided learnings and working visits in France.

The project is managed by the Institute for Applied Communication Research in Non-Formal Education, IKAB eV, which was founded in Bonn, Germany, in 1978. The aim of IKAB eV is to contribute to the promotion of civil society in Europe through intercultural political education.

Besides the acquisition of job-specific skills, the participants to MYK4international have the opportunity to develop and deepen their intercultural and social competencies, as well as their competence in foreign languages.

MYK4international is promoted and funded by the German Federal ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the European Social Fund, the Job Centres of the Mayen-Koblenz administrative districts and other partners, in the framework of the “Integration through exchange” programme.

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The EGF digs its heels inAfter some tough negotiations, the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund was prolonged until 2020

For the young too: Until 2017, the EGF will support young people who are not in employment, training or education in regions hardest hit by youth unemployment.©

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“An effective tool to help people who have lost their jobs, and in particular for lower-skilled and disadvantaged jobseek-ers”, is how European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, László Andor, describes the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF). A report published in November 2013 shows that, in 2012, the EGF helped 15 700 workers find new jobs. They had been dismissed due to the economic crisis and the effects of globalisation.

The EGF provides funding for concrete measures to help dis-missed workers improve their employability and find new jobs opportunities. It can be used to finance measures tailored to the specific circumstances of the workers concerned - intensive, personalised job-search assistance, various types of vocational training, up-skilling and retraining measures, temporary incentives and allowances for the duration of the active measures, business creation support, mentoring and public employment schemes.

New jobs

The annual report for 2012 shows that half of the workers who participated in the 41 EGF cases covered in the report had found new jobs or were self-employed by the end of the assistance period. An additional 1 069 people were in education or training to increase their future employability.

The results in terms of re-integration into employment are encouraging, given the current difficult job situation - and considering that the EGF supports workers made redundant in the particularly difficult circumstances of mass lay-offs. The supported workers are often among those with greater difficulties in the labour market, such as people who have worked for the same employer for a long period of time and have acquired expertise which may not be helpful when look-ing for a new job.

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The EGF has also proven to facilitate innovation, with some beneficiaries going as far as third level education. In coun-tries like Denmark, Sweden and Ireland, universities have cooperated and invented special condensed courses so that EGF beneficiaries can acquire their new qualifications within the limited EGF time frame (two years from the application date).

Up-hill struggle

Despite the recognised achievements of the EGF during its first seven years, prolonging the Fund for 2014-2020 was an up-hill struggle. A clear sign of this was the paradoxi-cal outcome of the negotiations between the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers, on the basis of the proposals put forward by the European Commission in 2011: on one hand, the EGF annual funding ceiling has been considerably reduced – from € 500 million per year in 2007-2013 to € 150 million per year in 2014-2020; on the other, its scope has been widened to include the self-employed, those on fixed-term contracts and temporary agency workers.

It is not uncommon that hundreds of small or micro-enter-prises close down in a single area or region, making not just the workers but also the self-employed owners redundant. The EGF will now be able to support them too, so long as they employed not more than 10 workers.

In some countries (e.g. Spain, Slovenia), a high proportion of workers are on fixed-term contracts. It did not feel fair that if, say, a thousand workers were made redundant, of whom 600 were working with fixed-term contracts, the EGF would only support the 400 who had open-ended contracts!

Moreover, the “crisis criterion” (eligibility of workers made redundant as a result of the present or future global finan-cial and economic crisis) - which had been temporarily introduced between 1 May 2009 and 30 December 2011 - is now back for the entire 2014-2020 period…

Finally, there is the fact that the EGF is increasingly well known.

Young people

The notoriety of the EGF will be further increased by the fact that, for the first three years of the 2014-2020 EU budg-etary period, it will exceptionally be available to support

young people who are not in employment, training or educa-tion in regions particularly hard hit by youth unemployment.

In effect, it will reinforce the amount of money available under the Youth Employment Initiative (€ 3 billion from the European Social Fund and € 3 billion from a specific EU budget line) which has to be spent at the beginning of the new budgetary period, in the regions that are hardest hit by youth unemployment.

A much lower funding ceiling for many more people, there-fore - but the EGF is here to stay!

More information: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=326&langId=en

Spain and the Netherlands apply most

The EGF started its operations in 2007. Up to August 2013, there had been 110 applications: overall, 20 EU countries requested some € 471.2 million to help 100 022 workers made redundant. The EGF was expanded in 2009 to include workers made redundant because of the global financial and economic crisis. EGF applications have been presented by an increasing number of Member States and in an increasing number of sectors.

EGF funding is a contribution to the measures also being funded by the EU countries which apply for the support: the EGF takes 60 % of the overall costs of the measures, while the Member State pays 40 % from public or private funds. The highest number of applications originates from Spain (18), followed by the Netherlands (16).

The majority of the applications concern workers made redundant in the manufacturing sector (82 %), out of which the automotive industry represents the biggest share, followed by machinery and equipment, textiles and the printing industry.

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What triggers EGF fundingReports on completed EGF interventions draw a vivid picture

Hard hit: The textile sector in the EU has been particularly affected by trade liberalisation.

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In Finland, in 2007, 921 workers benefited from EGF sup-port after the Perlos Oyj company, a manufacturer of com-ponents for the telecommunications and electronics sector, announced in January of that year that it would shut down production in Finland and focus its manufacturing activity on low-production cost countries. It was the largest private sector employer in the Joensuu region. 1 104 workers were made redundant, including 964 in that sole region.

In Germany, in 2009, 1 305 telecommunications workers benefited from EGF support after Nokia dismissed 2 300 workers in Bochum, where it was one of largest employers. The site of the Nokia plant was located in the structurally weakest part of the region.

In Spain, the textile sector was historically strong in Catalonia, in terms of employment and income. It consisted mainly of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), using predominantly manual labour. However, the sector was severely affected by trade liberalisation. In 2008, Spain applied for EGF support in favour of 1 100 workers who had been dismissed by 33 textile companies.

In France, in 2006, the automotive sector was severely affected by a reduction in its volume of activity. 1 345 workers, spread across 18 different Peugeot Société Anonyme (PSA)

suppliers situated in 11 regions across France, were dis-missed between September and December of that year. EGF assistance was targeted at a group of 267 workers dismissed by Ateliers Thomé Génot (ATG) in October 2006. The company was located in Nouzonville, in the structurally weak region of Champagne-Ardennes, where ATG was the main employer. The company had gone to judicial liquidation and was no longer able to provide assistance to its workers.

In Italy, the textile sector used to be an important part of the economy of the Piedmont region, although the region’s economic competitiveness was mostly due to the construction and service industries. When the crisis started in 2008, the textiles sector was not able to sustain its competitiveness. It consisted mostly of SMEs, which could not face the costs of reorganizing their production processes, diversifying their products and investing in innovation. 90 % of the textile com-panies of the region closed down. Italy applied for EGF sup-port to 1 537 workers who had been dismissed by 202 SMEs. 1 298 of them benefited in the end from such support.

Stories on opportunities created by the EGF: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=6218&type=2&furtherPubs=yes

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TRAINEESHIPS

An EU quality frameworkContent and conditions guidelines for EU countries

Key for the youth guarantee: Quality traineeships are a key component of the Youth Guarantee adopted by the EU Council of Ministers in April 2013.

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One in three traineeships is substandard with regard to working conditions or learning content. Many of these sub-standard traineeships are used by employers to replace entry-level jobs.

Over the past years, nearly half of young people have tried entering the labour market through a traineeship. And since the present financial and economic crisis struck in 2008, there have been growing concerns about abuses.

On 10 March 2014, the EU Council of Ministers adopted a series of guidelines that the European Commission had proposed on 4 December 2013. EU countries are now asked to ensure that national law or practice respects the prin-ciples set out in the guidelines and adapt their legislation where necessary.

The Youth Guarantee

The aim of these guidelines is to enable trainees to acquire high-quality work experience, help companies offer good quality traineeships, especially small and medium-size ones (SMEs), and prevent any abuse.

This is all the more crucial as traineeships are a key com-ponent of the Youth Guarantee adopted by the EU Council of Minister in April 2013, whereby all young people up to the age of 25 receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. Indeed, there are currently more young people in traineeship than in apprenticeship.

Quality is the key word, here: Quality of conditions and of content, the two being intimately linked. The Commission proposal requires that traineeships be based on a written agreement, covering learning content (educational objec-tives, supervision) and working conditions (limited duration, working time, clear indication whether trainees will be paid or otherwise compensated and whether they would be covered by social security).

Transparency

Quality goes with transparency: traineeship providers will be asked to disclose already in the vacancy notice whether the traineeship will be paid. Traineeship seekers should also be

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able to see the rate of trainees who are properly recruited by a company at the end of their traineeship.

The Framework does not cover traineeships that form part of a university degree or that are mandatory to access a specific profession. What it does cover, though, are “open market” traineeships, where potential trainees are directly in touch with companies, as well as traineeships which are part of active labour market policies, where a public author-ity is involved.

The Quality Framework for Traineeships is therefore able to support the implementation of Youth Guarantee schemes by EU Member States and would help extend EURES, the European network of employment agencies, to traineeships (see article p.6). It can also support programmes under the Youth Employment Initiative, which provides EU funding to directly support young people in regions where youth unem-ployment rates are above 25 %.

It is complementary to the European Alliance for Apprentice-ship, which covers forms of nationally recognized Initial Vocational Education and Training (IVET) that formally alter-nate company-based training and school-based education. The Alliance promotes the quality, quantity and attractive-ness of apprenticeships, which are equally important under the Youth Guarantee.

Transnational traineeships

The Quality Framework also encourages more transnational traineeships, a key condition for helping EU citizens make full use of their right to live and work in another EU country, where their skills might be more sought after than in their home country. Indeed, cross-EU labour mobility would be grandly facilitated if EU workers first experienced a positive traineeship in another EU country.

The results of a Eurobarometer survey published in November 2013 show that only 9 % of respondents have

had a chance to carry out a traineeship abroad (see box). If all EU countries guarantee the quality of traineeships in a comparable way, this would encourage potential trainees to apply to a traineeship offer in another country, possibly with the help of a public employment service. Indeed, one in five respondents who had not had a traineeship abroad said that they did not have enough information about what they can expect from a cross-border traineeship.

Eight out of ten respondents who had a traineeship abroad reported that it had improved their language skills and seven in ten that the experience had made them consider living abroad.

Multiple traineeships

46 % of respondents to a Eurobarometer survey on the experience of trainees in the EU, carried out in April and May 2013, have done a traineeship. A high proportion of them have even done multiple traineeships.

23 % of trainees are offered to renew the traineeship at the end of their time, instead of being properly recruited. Only three in ten respondents who completed a traineeship were offered an employment contract at the end of their traineeship (27 %).

35 % of traineeship providers do not offer a written traineeship agreement.

Only 9 % of traineeships take place abroad. Respondents in Luxembourg (27 %), Latvia (25 %) and Austria (23 %) were most likely to report that they had at least one traineeship abroad. Respondents with traineeship experience are most likely to have had their most recent traineeship in another EU country in Luxembourg (22 %), Ireland (20 %) and Latvia (19 %).

Transparency: Vacancy notices should disclose whether or not the traineeship will be paid.

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OT H E R VO I C E S

EU funding social leverage

Pierre Baussand, Social Platform Director: Three levers must be activated to make the new ESF a success.

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The 2014 – 2020 European Social Fund (ESF) includes three key social levers. The first lever is a political one. For the first time in ESF history promoting social inclusion and combating poverty (and any discrimination) in particular through active inclusion is one of the four thematic objec-tives. To ensure that spending reflects this priority, the EU has set a minimum threshold: at least 20 % of the 71 billion allocated to the fund has to be used for combatting poverty and promoting social inclusion. This is a milestone in the history of EU funds.

The second social lever is a contractual one. The ESF sets up social pre-conditions that have to be in place before disburs-ing funding. Any application for funding has to demonstrate that it will promote social inclusion and combat poverty, anti-discrimination, ensure gender equality fully, and implement the United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Member States should identify from the begin-ning in a concrete and not too broad way, how and for what they want to use the money. This was often missing under the previous ESF.

The third social lever is democratic, the so called “partner-ship principle”. It is now mandatory for Member States to organise partnerships with relevant actors, including civil

society organisations (CSOs). The involvement of the social partners and CSOs at the appropriate territorial level in the programming and implementation of the ESF is of capital importance for achieving good governance as well as to ensure the effective and efficient implementation of the funds. To date the involvement of civil society and other stakeholders in the implementation of the funds has been very haphazard with very few Member States applying the partnership principle properly. Stakeholders were often just informed about decisions that were already taken by pub-lic authorities.

To ensure CSOs are properly included, they should be involved in the preparation of partnership agreements and progress reports throughout the preparation and implementation of programmes, as well as in monitoring committees. This allows making an added value of: CSOs’ sound knowledge of the reality on the ground; the needs of different target groups; how to successfully run integrated projects funded by Structural Funds; and the key role played by Structural Funds in delivering on the Europe 2020 poverty reduction and employment targets. This cooperation ensures that those who are socially excluded, and the organisations working with them, have a say in the implementation of the ESF.

Politically these are major achievements at the EU level and they can certainly be a springboard for better support in combatting poverty. However make no mistake, the ESF on its own cannot reverse the dramatic increase in poverty and unemployment that we currently witness, and never was it meant to. At the moment, this responsibility lies within Member States. It is nonetheless worthy to mention that other EU funds, including the ERDF, EaSI and Horizon 2020, have also to support social policies, as “promoting social inclusion and combating poverty” is one of the overarching priorities for all EU funds as enshrined in the general regula-tion on the common provisions on structural funds.

The ESF on its own is not the solution to our social crisis in Europe but it can be a part of the solution. It has in its design good political, contractual and democratic principles to ensure positive social leverage in the EU and can support Member States in alleviating poverty and ensuring social inclusion. Now, let’s implement it.

Pierre Baussand Social Platform, Director

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I N T E RV I E W

Michel Servoz is Director General of the European Commission’s Employment, Social Affairs and inclusion Directorate General since 1 February 2014

Time to converge again ©

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You were a judge in France and now you are a Director General at the European Commission…

I studied law and political science and after that, indeed, I became a judge. I then worked on European issues with the First president of the Cour de cassation, one of France’s courts of last resort. This gave me the urge to work at European level. I joined the European Commission’s External Affairs Directorate General in 1991 and never practised law again! It is rather what I learnt about economics and international relations at “Sciences Po”, in Paris, that proved to be useful. That’s the good thing about the European Commission: people come from all sorts of professional backgrounds. You learn to become polyvalent and flexible. At the time there was a rather idealistic and abstract percep-tion of Europe. Nowadays, the perception is more pragmatic, some would say inter-governmental… Yet we managed to achieve a Banking Union in a time of crisis!

You then became Deputy Secretary General of the Commission and coordinated the work on the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, which was adopted in 2010. What do you think of it today?

The Europe 2020 strategy was conceived at a time when we thought we could master the crisis. Since then, however, everyone has been doing crisis management instead. It is only now that we are starting to see signs of overcoming the crisis. We must go back to the long-term objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. The good thing is that, throughout the crisis, the European social model and its “automatic

stabilisers” worked quite well. The problem, however, is that the same stabilisers are now putting the brakes on economic recovery. That is a weakness we have to address.

The Europe 2020 strategy is having a structuring effect on European economic governance…

Indeed, the European Semester process stems from the strategy. It tries to help the Member States converge and correct the most blatant excesses. And it’s working! By and large, the governments have taken substantial action, though not always very delicately… The Commission has repeatedly called upon certain governments to undertake a “smart” budgetary consolidation and preserve social protec-tion and education. The challenge now is to get out of the crisis together. During the crisis, divergence increased both between Member States and within them. Restoring the con-vergence engine is one of the great challenges lying ahead.

Will not the fate of the Europe 2020 strategy be decided at global level?

In the G20 framework, growth strategies are being discussed which are exactly the same as the Europe 2020 strategy. It’s a form of recognition. There might be some degree of convergence on certain aspects of it but the real issue is to be competitive on the global market: We cannot com-pete with China on labour costs or environmental norms. We must seek our competitiveness elsewhere: in terms of quality, innovation, research and education… areas where we are not very good compared to the USA, Japan, South Korea and Canada.

Michel Servoz, new European Commission Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Director General: The challenge now is to get out of the crisis together.

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Useful websitesThe website of Commissioner Andor: http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/andor/index_en.htmThe home page of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion: http://ec.europa.eu/social/The website of the European Social Fund: http://ec.europa.eu/esf

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