While unemployment is hitting records across the 27 EU member states, the European Commission presents a set of measures to boost jobs. It also identifies the green economy, health services and ICT as areas with the biggest job potential in the future. "All together, the green economy, the health and new technology sectors will create more than 20 millions of jobs in the years to come. Member States need to seize these opportunities, mobilize existing resources and stimulate their labour market in close cooperation with the social partners." said Barroso. In pratical terms, members states are encourage hiring by reducing taxes on labour or supporting business start-ups more. "Job creation must become a real European priority" said László Andor, EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. The employment package aims to create a genuine EU labour market to restore growth and to face major structural changes and includes proposals such as :
- Create the right conditions for job creation and labour demand such as hiring subsidies that create new jobs, a (budget neutral) tax shift from labour to environmental taxes, or support for self-employment.
- Exploit the big job potential areas for the future such as the green economy where 20 million jobs could be created between now and 2020 and to include green employment into their’ National Job Plans, strengthening green skills intelligence
- Support an increase in highly qualified ICT labour and promote digital skills across the workforce.
- To improve the matching of jobs with job-seekers, the package proposes to transform the EURES job seeker portal into a true European placement and recruitment tool and foresees (as of 2013) innovative online self-service applications to provide users instantly with a clear geographical mapping of European job offers.
The new call for proposals makes available 1,140.00 M€ of funding and aims at fostering interchange, cooperation and mobility between education and training systems within the European Union so that they become a world quality reference. Besides Comenius, Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig and Jean Monnet, the programme offers support to activities for policy co-operation in the fields of languages, information and communication technologies and dissemination and exploitation of results.
