Committee on Employment and Social Affairs Ordinary meeting
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EMPL European Parliament
Follow its sittingsLi Andersson
Then we can move on to the exchange of views with the executive directors of the agencies under EMPEL remit. So it's my great pleasure to once again welcome everyone to the annual exchange of views that we have with the directors of the five agencies. And even if we interact and also visit the agencies on different occasions, this annual exchange of views is a very good opportunity to hear about the latest key issues, debates and publications, including work done jointly, if there are transversal subjects where the agencies have been working together. Recent ample work on issues such as digitalization in the world of work, just transition, vocational training, skills and qualifications recognition and portability, labor mobility has drawn in different ways on the expertise brought by our agencies. And the committee, of course, greatly values such expertise in view of effect-based decision making.
For today's discussion, there are no specific teams set in advance, but, of course, Empower Committee's ongoing and upcoming files are a good starting point, and we look forward to discovering the ongoing and forthcoming activities of our agencies. This is also a timely moment for exchange as we will have executive vice president Mensato here in the committee tomorrow, for the structured dialogue feeding into the commission's future work program, so that we can also get some inspiration and maybe some ideas from the exchange today. So without further ado, I would like to extend a warm welcome to Jorgen Siebel, executive director of CDFOP, Cosmin Boyancu, Executive Director of ELAW, William Cookburn, Executive Director of EU OSHA, Apilvy Torsti, Director of the ETF, and Ivalo Kaufin, Executive Director of Eurofund. And I would also like to welcome the experts appointed by the parliament to the agency's boards for helping us to create synergies with the work of our agencies. Unfortunately, Mrs.
Jungerius, expert at EU OSHA, missus Benedetti, expert at the ETF, and mister Dimovsky, expert at CDFOP, and missus Reidy, expert at Eurofound, could not be with us today, but missus Reidy has sent us a written contribution, which can be found in the meeting documents. So this time, we will start with a very short glimpse of key highlights from every agency director, and then we'll follow that by a first quick Q and A session with the group coordinators, and then we will go ahead with the more detailed presentations. So I will start with the challenging request of around three minutes for the Director, just focusing on key highlights before we delve into the questions and answers. So starting with Mr. Siebel.
Please, the floor is yours.
Jürgen Siebel
Yes. Thank you very much, dear Chair, dear Lee, dear employee committee members. Great to be here. It's a pleasure to give you some highlights of our work program for the year that just started. But no remark about 2026 without looking back, because last year, 2025, CDFOP and Eurofound celebrated fifty years of existence, and this was a major milestone.
It also gave us quite a lot of attention for our topics, which is, of course, good. We keep implementing also a respective strategic initiative, which is called CDFOP at 50, which means that we're going to look at innovation in the way we work with our stakeholders, but also a new research and development strategy is currently being framed, and a fresh approach and look at how we can secure resources because that remains a main problem. In terms of the highlights for this year, I would like to delve a bit into the survey work that we do to collect information firsthand. And here we have three big ones in different stages. The first one I would like to mention is the European Vocational Teacher Survey.
It's the first that is ever done in Europe. It's currently in the field. So, of course, no findings yet, but it's sort of the most advanced that we do, and we do it in 23 countries, which is a very good number. Then we have the third edition of the European Skills and Jobs Survey. This will be fielded in 2027, so we're preparing for it now.
We are interviewing adult Europeans about their skills and the way they match or do not match to their jobs, and it also goes deep in terms of digital and AI and its impacts on their jobs and on the skills that they need. And the third and last is the most distant, is the also first European green transition survey, which we will conduct and where we are trying to build the survey content now and also build coalitions. I'll come to that in a moment. We need to know more definitely how European businesses adapt their jobs, also the training that they conduct with workers, and also the skill sets they require to be more green, more circular, and also energy efficient. And such a big survey where we hope that we can do the fieldwork in 2030, so quite some time away.
But nonetheless, we hope that this could inform EU green agenda significantly. Resources, however, are a problem. So in this example, you see that we will try to build coalitions to bring other DGs together, maybe member states, because out of our ever shrinking third title, it will be very difficult to conduct such work. Now for the last five seconds, I also want to wrap up that we are, of course, also still looking at the European Vet strategy, which is emerging this year and which will come out very soon, where CDFOP is asked to provide a significant number of inputs for all things from recognition to validation, etcetera. So a great field for us to support policymaking to make it informed policymaking.
Thank you for the first statement.
Speaker 4
Thank you very much. And, once again, thank you for allowing us, for giving us this opportunity to introduce our activities for this year, for the coming years. So, just to be short and set the scene for further information that will be provided in the next round, just to say that we've reached full operational functionality in 2024. '25 was a year of consolidation. And while we are now operationally mature, we're still in a sort of start-up mode.
And, we are going into a second phase of our existence where the accent will be put on trying to be more efficient. So to do more with the same resources because we don't anticipate an increase in resources, except for the regular one. So to be more efficient, also to be more impactful, to be more effective, and to reach tangible results that we can also measure. And third, to streamline our operations in such a way that we deliver more of what is in demand for our stakeholders and beneficiaries. So this is the point for our program this year, next year to prepare for this next phase for Ella.
And, of course, we will deepen the delivery of our mandate in all aspects with regard to enforcement, to control, to make sure that we reach the level of effectiveness with controls and move from what we had in the first phase of, let's say, more demonstration type of inspections to targeted inspections and to reach indeed the goals for enforcement. The same goes for all the other types of activities. For example, capacity building is very much in demand. We want to continue with these trainings for many thousands of staff, effectively for inspectors, labor inspectors, and so on. Another issue that we will concentrate on this year is to continue our thematic approaches.
During our life, we've looked more deeply into sectors like seasonal work in agriculture, road transport, construction sector, Horeca. And this year, we will concentrate on the care sector. So this is the year of the care sector, long term care, and we will address issues related to this sector. Also, another thing that we want to look more and more because it is a more pressing issue is the issue of the third country nationals. And just to quote from the labor mobility study of, the intra EU mobility report, from the EU commission, we are talking about approximately 19,000,000 non EU citizens who are part of the labor force.
So I will stop here. Thank you. And then more information in the second round.
Thank you very much. And Mr. Kochberg?
Speaker 5
Thank you, chair. Thank you, members of the committee, for giving me the opportunity to give you some very quick highlights of the work of the EU Agency for Safety and Health at Work. And I'm gonna focus firstly on our upcoming role in ensuring that occupational safety and health is seen as crucial for the quality jobs roadmap and the quality jobs act, and how we can support that. Occupational safety and health is essential in combating the labor shortages that we're seeing across Europe, ensuring that there's attractiveness, in particular, in sectors such as construction, the health care sector, agriculture, and also in supporting the twin transitions. And the agency has been working on the green transition for many years.
Did a foresight on green jobs 16 years ago. We've been working on the digital transition for 12 years, where we did a foresight article on crowd work, and we're continuing to work on both of those in carrying out research and analysis to support quality jobs. The third transition, demographics, is something that we're addressing and continue to address transversely in all of our activities, not only the aging of the workforce, but also the increasing participation of women. And all of this, of course, is essential for Europe's competitiveness and the work that we have been doing to show what that means for competitiveness at the level of Europe in terms of GDP or member states, or at the level of the enterprise, is more and more important. We will also continue to provide data and analysis through our surveys, publishing this year already the data from our workplaces survey, Essena, and preparing the work for the next round of our workers' survey, OSHPULSE.
We'll be developing further guidance and tools, such as the online interactive risk assessment tool, and I'll go into more detail in the next presentation. I just want to end this highlight by mentioning also our awareness raising through the Healthy Workplaces campaign that we will launch at the end of this year, Together for Mental Health at Work, all about preventing psychosocial risks. We'll be helping employers and intermediaries at the workplace, social partners, prevention experts in carrying out risk assessment, in how to combat harassment, sexual harassment, and violence, and the link between physical risks and mental health. We'll have a focus on the health and social care sector, and we'll also be talking about working with mental health problems and how to help people back into work who've been suffering from mental health issues. The campaign that we finished last year on digitalization involved 38 national focal points with their national social partners, a 100 sectoral and European multinationals as official campaign partners, and collectively organized over 2,000 events.
So we're looking to have at least that level of engagement with this new topic. We see a lot of interest, and are very much looking forward to it. Thank you.
Thank you very much. And Missus Torsti.
Speaker 7
Thank you, chair, dear members of the committee, and others present, of course, extending the thanks that colleagues already said. This is a very valuable opportunity for us jointly also to prepare these events. I thought this first minute just to give a little bit of framing what is it that 26 program for ETF, and then two, three highlights from it. In terms of framing, there was a mention of the 50th birthday and of a startup phase of Ella. ETF is there in between. Has given me a good phrase, prime age in its thirties, which, of course, is much more serious these days as it's the externally focused agency, and hence, we really need to look at our framing from that angle.
And luckily, there is this 30 years of background now when we need to actually look at the world in Ukraine, in Palestine, and further afield. The other framing is, of course, coming from the skills as seeing really a strategic asset now for Europe and its competitiveness growth, but also really resilience and social security. So it is in that framing with the 28 partner countries from Ukraine to the Balkans, and the Mediterranean, Central Asia that we are looking at our work program also this year with devoted colleagues working in Turin. Union of Skills Global Gateway, just to mention a few key strategies, of course, framing from the commission and parliament and institution side of our work for these Skills for Global Europe. In terms of highlights, I divide also on the geography and thematic, as is our mandate.
In geography, clearly, two very strong highlights. One enlargement. Of course, we are supporting now the potential candidate countries in their EU path, in particular, Western Balkans, Moldova, and Ukraine where we have also a dedicated task force. So that work, of course, takes many formats, from introduction of the youth guarantee or EU policy to the systemic approach to skills education and also various enlargement processes. Another key geography is the Mediterranean.
PACT for Mediterranean, which was developed last year, is an action plan now on its way to the different institutional handling. So ETF 20 years background in that part of the neighborhood of EU has, of course, been part of the work in the field of skills for jobs, for clean energy, and also very much for the mobility and mobility pathways. I should mention other geographies, African Union, of course, there was Central Asia, of course, also a new strategic area. India, come to those a little bit in the deepening part of the presentation. Highlights in the thematic, there, it was mentioned by our colleague for the EU Vets strategy.
So the external dimension of that is, of course, important, as are several other co works that are now in the labor market systems in the external, the words, of course, the enlargement. And I would mention separately work with the financial institutions and investments at large. The global gateway brings a dimension, whether it's about AI, digital, sec different sectors that we need to take into account, also when we look at the skills portability where there is, of course, the interest of the EU, of the partner countries, and of the individuals that the ETF work tries to really bring together. So in a nutshell, '26 is a continuity, to keep skills at the heart of enlargement, neighborhood cooperation, and recovery. It's a bit of a sad continuation as well because the fragility is really increasing in all places practically where we were.
Thank you.
Ivailo Kalfin
Thank you very much, chair and distinguished members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen. I'll try to focus your attention on what you could expect from your fund until the end of the year, not in an exclusive way. I mean, we cannot mention everything. Of course, I'll try to give some flavor of what you could expect from us. And these are projects that we are looking working on since many years, and these are some new projects that apparently are very much high on the agenda of the decision makers, including the European Parliament.
To start with, we are going to continue working on the minimum wages and the analysis of the minimum wages, the impact, in particular, the impact on low paid jobs. We are going to look this year, and, also, we are looking where available, and I think we are quite ahead with that at the collective agreements, not only with the minimum wages, but we started analyzing the collective agreements beyond the minimum wage and what is agreed between the social partners. Next topic, again, that's a continuation of our work. This is the care services. And here, we touch upon three strengths of the care services, the workforce, who are the care workers, the employment conditions, paid, unpaid with contracts, without contracts, with what types of contracts, etcetera, etcetera, and the job quality of the care workers.
We also continue working on the child guarantee. We are going to publish towards the end of the year a report on the state of play of the implementation of the child guarantee, and we are going to create a visual tool also for that. We continue working quite a lot on the twin transition. We have two major reports on sustainable work, where we focus on different groups of workers and the impact of the twin transition on these groups. And another very interesting report is on the social implications of the twin transition.
The first output was already done an article with the environment agency, and we continue with this topic. In terms of AI, of equipment management, and digital, we have a series of research projects. For example, the challenges to management of the telework because we always and often look at the workers, but there are quite a lot of challenges to the management also, the implications on the work organization, etcetera, etcetera. We continue working with industrial relations and analyzing the industrial relations, in particular, the participation of the social partners in the European semester and the existence and the work of economic and social committees at national level. We have several very interesting reports.
One is on the EU upward convergence to or regional disparities. I mean, to call it otherwise, this is based very much on the idea of the letter report, the freedom to stay. There, we consider six dimensions: the economic, the environment, access to services, housing, infrastructure, and quality of the institutions. And we try to create an index and a map and to see per region, per map in Europe, how the situation develops and linking this to the demographic changes and the demographic transitions. We also work on the EU upward convergence, where we also are building an index based on the employment committee dimensions for job quality.
We are using 54 indicators and, again, trying to see how the job quality in the different parts of Europe goes. Lastly, I finish with that. We'll continue our work with the surveys. We are going to launch the overview report of the quality of life survey very soon at the European Parliament, and thank you for agreeing to host it. And we are going to put in the field the European quality of life survey later this year.
So next year, we shall have lots of information about the quality of life. Our annual e survey this year is going to focus on the people with disabilities and their integration. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. So this was the sneak peek before the in-depth presentations, and we'll start with a general Q and A in ping-pong format. So starting with coordinators or group representatives for one minute for the questions and two minutes for the answers. I do not have anyone on my list from the EPP, which means I will start by giving the floor to Mrs. Kellermans from the SND.
Thank.
Estelle Ceulemans
You, chair. I'll speak French, if anyone needs interpretation. So thank you all from the various agencies, the very various social agencies that are linked to our committee. It's always a pleasure to meet you. But after this first round, this whets our appetite for all the works and studies that you're going to be dealing with in the months ahead.
And sometimes we're a little bit frustrated because we know how well you're working, but we don't always have the impression that we sufficiently grasp the content of your work to inform our policies. So I think we have to think together about how we can get to grips and take on board all that work you're doing, which doesn't have very high quality. But I haven't really had any questions for this first round. We'll perhaps come back to it in the second, but I see that there are some red lines in terms of the work that we're going to be looking at ourselves. And I think you're, and it's good that you're calling into question the demographic trains, and Osha wants to work in it.
I also hear the psychosocial risk, quality of work, demographic transition. And I think on those aspects, as it has been said, caring professions, the fact that in health care, we have got, we're gonna have a shortage of about 4,000,000 by 2030, and all the challenges that arise. And I think we will have the opportunity to come back to all these different aspects.
Li Andersson
Alright. No specific question. Then we move on to the patriots and Missus Stella Pisa Carreon.
Margarita de la Pisa Carrión
Thank you very much, chair. And thank you very much to the guest speakers as well for having spoken to us so positively and allowing us to have an exchange with so many agencies. It's not an easy task. It's true that we have a number of MEPs here, and some aren't because we have other committees taking place at the moment. And there's also the Afghanistan delegation meeting as well.
But I just wanted to address William Coburn, if I may, because I think that the data that he presented were very interesting in particular. Especially when it comes to exchanges with businesses, there is a percentage of companies that see regulation as a threat to their competitiveness. We mustn't call into question the legislation that's there for health and safety. I think we all agree on that. But perhaps simplification could be an objective, could be something that this committee follows.
And there are administrative processes that don't seem to provide any added value when it comes to health and safety. So perhaps something could be explored there. We see that in addition to accidents in the workplace, we do have some very good results that we're starting to see now. I think we're on the right track. I'm not sure whether you have data that's broken down by sex or by sector, etcetera.
When we talk about serious and fatal accidents in the workplace, it would be good to know which people we are talking about. We have the general figures, but some of them are quite dramatic. We also see that on many occasions, they are men that they relate to. There are many sectors where we have more male dominated fields. But I just want to know from we see 3.4 percent of occupational illnesses seems to be a very high figure.
How can we know about those illnesses? How much of them are properly attributed to the job that they're doing rather than the person, etcetera? How can we do to find out more about these figures? Thank you.
Speaker 13
Thank you very much for the question. Some very important questions there. I don't really have the time available to enter into too much detail at the moment. But when it comes to the relationship between legislation and competitiveness, what we're trying to do with the tools like OIRA is to make it easier for perhaps the owner of an SME or a micro business to be able to carry out a risk assessment in an effective way without having to call in an external prevention service or, if necessary, for something very technical, let's say, for the risk assessment that has to be carried out, then they could call in an external. When it comes to accidents in the workplace, as you point out quite rightly, they affect men more than women.
The impact might be greater among young people as well. There are various reasons for that. But the consequences can be worse for older workers. We see that there is some segmentation. We break things down by gender.
Speaker 15
So we see that musculoskeletal disorders or psychosocial risks, etc., we see that they are increasingly affecting women in the workplace. And when it comes to the link between a given illness and the work that is being performed, it depends greatly on the illness we're talking about. In some cases, some types of cancer, etcetera, there's a very clear and very direct link. Other illnesses might include a multitude of factors, and that might impact a number of different sectors. It's not linked to the fact that the employer has to reduce the risk level to an absolute minimum, so that the jobs can be performed safely.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And I have no one from the ECR on my list, which means that we move to renew Mrs. Van den Bergh.
Brigitte van den Berg
Yes. Thank you very much, chair, and thank you very much all the directors for giving a sneak peek into what this year is gonna bring for you. Very interesting, and I have some questions to ask. I actually want to ask, of course, I want to pay some attention to the recognition of skills and skills portability. So I want to ask a question both to Jurgen Siebel and to Mirz Torsti, so I just want to ask you what are your hopes?
What are your hopes for the proposal that the commission will come with? What level of ambition do you hope for and do you expect? And what should it look like according to you? How are we gonna make that skills portability, yeah, as well possible, as well as possible? And, yeah, this is my most important question, and I also want to ask one to Eila because you were saying that you're also gonna focus on third country nationals.
And I am wondering which specific actions are planned around third-country nationals this year. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. So we have Mr. Siebel, Mr. Torsti and Mr. Bojan joined that order.
Jürgen Siebel
Yes. Thank you for the question. Indeed, I mean, you start with the level of ambition. I mean, the level of ambition should be to really realize the freedom of movement and also to facilitate, but that's more for Pilvie than to say that third country nationals coming in get their skills recognized. We work, of course, for the skills portability initiative, providing the backbone to it is and remains the learnings out learning outcomes approach, which has been kind of driving a lot of also European tools starting from the European qualifications framework and then the respective national dimensions of it that has been going on and is seeing definitely improvements.
But we also have to tackle, of course, the world of micro credentials and all kinds of credentialing that are now appearing also in terms of how AI can potentially facilitate and help to in this context, and that is at the heart of what City of Hope is currently researching and also will feed into the skills portability initiative and work is ongoing. It's not yet final, but those are the fields that are most important for us at this moment.
Speaker 7
Thank you very much, Fortewandenberg, for the question. That is, of course, a very broad one as you very well know, and the ambition level is probably for those who will make the press who will present the policy. But I thought perhaps just mention three substantial criteria and then two geographies for this discussion, which I think are very important and with which we work in order to provide, of course, the data for and evidence for this preparation. First one is the differentiation between validation and qualifications. I mean, validations and classical qualifications, because validation is becoming more and more important, of course, as we have the informal skills and different types of skills, different age groups, etc.
And that we see as a very important element to be taken into account in this entire spectrum where, of course, then recognition of qualification remains important and is always there, but one has to important understand these as part of the sort of same continuum. Secondly, when we talk about skills portability, I mentioned already in my first intervention the sort of three-way approach that we very much use as framework in all ETF work, namely that you have to look at it from the angle of the countries of origin, of the countries where people are looking to start their working life at, whether it's EU or member states, and then the individuals. And many of our studies really have that angle. We've started also working this year for the first time with the European Investment Bank in their facility that looks, for instance, at the gender aspect in particular, now in Tunisia and Moldova. And then thirdly, what Juergen Siebel said about the European, different policies and frameworks.
That's very important when we look at the external dimension that ETF is a specialist in. We sometimes think that our Europass or Eurosystems or ESCOs are either complex, or we don't even imply them fully in our member states. But when we call to the external world, it's a really important framework because it typically actually is the one that is available and is really broad and well evidenced. And that brings me to two geographies where we have witnessed this. One is actually the African Union.
ETF is doing a special five-year work at the moment called African Continental Qualifications Framework, and that is precisely with the idea that there is the European qualifications that appeared relevant as a concept and now then being developed in the African Continental approach with African Union. And second, Dieter mentioned the pact for the Mediterranean and work in the Mediterranean region. High emphasis there on the skills portability and everything I said, whether it's about validation or qualification recognitions or the three way approach to the skills portability. Thank you.
Speaker 4
Thank you, and thank you for this question. So I would try to be brief. Indeed, third country nationals is an emerging issue. And when they are in the workplace, in the labor market, they have the same rights as any European citizens. So we don't differentiate it from this point of view.
But if you look both from practical and legal point of view, there are some differences. First, from the practical point of view, they are more vulnerable. They don't have the same access to information or they also lack the knowledge of how systems work, administrative systems work. And in terms of working conditions, they are prone to, of course, exploitation and bad conditions. This is from the practical point of view.
From the legal point of view, there are also some differences because they have also to respect not only the labor legislation, Social Security, but also the migration legislation. So this creates some differences from regular EU citizens. So, from our point of view, in order to address these issues, first, we need to enhance, to strengthen our operational capacity, the possibilities for us to work better with other law enforcement agencies and institutions, not only at European level like Europol and others, but also in the country to support member states that they address this from a multidimensional point of view, so with other enforcement authorities in the country. And second, also to work more with third countries. So that's why we are starting to implement cooperation agreements with third countries.
We started with the Republic of Moldova. Then Ukraine is now next in line. They came with a big delegation to have a similar agreement with countries in the Western Balkans to address also the information issue, not only the enforcement part, but also the information that these people are informed before they come to the EU to work on this, on their rights and on ways to address, if they feel, that these rights are not respected. And, also, recently, we are contacted, incidentally, by other countries, like, for example, Egypt or big countries, India, Brazil, with countries that have large numbers of their citizens working in the EU.
Villy Søvndal
Thank you very much to all of you for your contribution. Very interesting. I come from one of the most organized labor markets countries in Europe. I'm elected in Denmark. We think that one of the reasons why we got as competitive as we got is that we have this very well organized labor market because it creates quality jobs with a lot of energy on education, etcetera.
But we need some more tools to fight what's not organized, where people are working poor, working what is social dumping, where they're paid a lot under what is average payment for jobs for the organized part of the labor market. Could you please do everything you could to enforce the initiatives, also because we stand in front of an enlargement where we might run into the same problem as we did in 2004 if we are not ready. And when I read the program of the commission, one of the very important things is fight of poverty. This is probably one of the most important ways of fighting poverty. This is also one of the ways to create quality jobs.
But please do everything you can to press for this development. And which initiative do you see as the most important one?
Li Andersson
Since that was a general wish for everyone, mister, oh, yeah. Well, you can, of course, answer this.
Speaker 4
Well, partially, fighting poverty is indeed a transversal goal for the union and for all countries. And our share, although, is not directly explicitly mentioned in our mandate, is to address the issue of poverty through addressing the issue of undeclared work. So tackling undeclared work is a way of bringing or helping with this goal of fighting poverty because declared work brings benefits for people, not only for states, for countries, but also for people directly. And that's why we want to mainstream tackling undeclared work in our activities. And through this, to have a program that we help capacity of member states to tackle undeclared work and indirectly to fight poverty.
And Mister Carlfin, next.
Ivailo Kalfin
Thanks very much, madam chair, and thank you for recognizing something that we are also advocating, that the job quality is part of the competitiveness of Europe. If you Europe wants to be attractive, then the jobs in Europe has to be attractive, I mean, for the best workers. So, that's absolutely there, and our core work is based on that. You give the model of Denmark. Denmark and Nordic countries have very strong social partners and social dialogue.
And this is one of the things, I think, looking at what is happening around Europe to really encourage a much better role and much more important involvement of the social partners. Because there are some issues that could be decided at legislative level, but there are some others that can be decided only at sectoral level or even at company level. And then you need to have the representation if you want to create proper conditions. Usually, where you have problems with the working conditions, this is where you don't have appropriate representation of the workers or the employer. So that's one thing.
And the second that I would just like to note, Eurofound is working very much on poverty. Poverty is not only income-related poverty. Poverty is multidimensional. I mean, most poor people or people with low income are the people with small children, for example. So that's why public services, the child guarantee as a policy initiative, are very important.
But then you have access to energy, access to housing. These are all elements of poverty. And, again, this very rapidly changing environment in terms of digital and climate change also creates particular groups and pockets in the working population that become disadvantaged. And that's where, indeed, the focus should be. We cannot enforce.
We can analyze on your phone. So you're welcome to use our analysis. Thank you.
Speaker 7
And Mrs. Thorst. Thank you, chair. Justin, angled at a question that I think colleagues have opened very well from their side. ETF does, among our monitoring work, certain surveys that have been developed by Seraphone and Eurofound for the member states. And we do them in particular in the Western Balkan countries, for instance.
So to get data that is comparable to member states in a particular question related to the field where we work. And there, when talking about quality jobs, we can of course immediately talk about education levels and opportunities, for instance, for adults to participate in adult lifelong learning opportunities, etcetera. And there, just to take one example, when we look at the participation of adults in EU member states and in the Western Balkan countries using the same survey method, we just of course recognize a huge gap and difference between the Balkan countries and even our averages. And these are, of course, the evidence that then need to be used when we tackle various questions bringing those countries closer. As in ETF mandate, we also have the policy advice mandate part of it.
So these are also discussions that are being held and triangulated between the commission and the European parties, the countries, and us in terms of the kind of policy advice that is being given. But these are very developments as well. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you. And for this first round, I still have Mister Koeness from the left.
Li Andersson
All right. Then we move on to the in-depth presentations. And we are starting with the CFOP. So, Mr. Sibel now gets six minutes for the in-depth presentation.
Jürgen Siebel
Yes. And we now also have slides to share. I hope you can see them also, wherever you are. And I can also hopefully move them. Yes, this is ups.
This was too quick. Can someone put it on presentation mode again? Because, I don't know, something went wrong. Okay. I mean, I see them.
I don't know. They're not in presentation mode, but I can take you through it.
Brigitte van den Berg
Just a question for the chair. Will they also be on those screens, or should I come sit in the front row to see them only on that screen?
They should be on the big one.
Brigitte van den Berg
Not really. Not really. Okay. Oops. Now it's gonna jump back again.
Jürgen Siebel
If you maybe so, I go to this slide. This is what I told you in the first, and where I didn't have a slide, so we can skip it quickly, but it makes reference also to the interoperability of skills in the portability context, which was something I could not cover in this first minute, but I did in answering Missus Pfannenberg's question. And now some insights into our ongoing work. And here, as you know, CDFOP does a lot of work in what we call skills intelligence, which is trying to inform, of course, policymakers, but also the labor market actors on what is trending, what is likely, what can be forecast in time horizons, as you can see here, up to 2040. And I want to delve into this, first thing.
This is scenario building for our forecast because you have to understand that, you know, of course, there are some macroeconomic models in the background that we feed, and then we project scenarios, and we project how employment will develop in a particular sector, what kind of skills will be needed for the workforce of the future. And this we do always in relation to what the policy objectives are. So our baseline scenarios usually include the European objectives that are manifest in all kinds of plans, like the Green Deal, digital and other frameworks that we have. And then we can vary the inputs and build scenarios to see what would happen if we did a, b or c. And here, the first one that we are currently building is this lifelong learning scenario, where we're looking at five different ones that are with a projection phase to 2040, trying to see, okay, what is going to happen in the labor market and what are the implications of what is happening there to the world of skilling, upskilling, reskilling, and education in more general.
And what is important here is that for lifelong learning, you have to do this balancing act. This balancing act between trying to be, of course, let's say, bespoke to the needs of the people that need this learning experience and give them something that works for them, while at the same time, so that's the flexibility element. While at the same time, of course, you want these things to remain comparable so that, what we just addressed in the last round, people get their skills however they have been acquired, be it informal education, informal, nonformal, that this can be validated and eventually also recognized for any type of mobility. So that's always a balancing act. And I think with the introduction of AI, and this has actually been going on before AI, that learning and content can be tailored more and more to the needs and also to the speeds of people who undergo the training, that this has this wonderful effect of flexibility, but we will always have to balance it with the permeability of the education programs and systems.
Second thing I wanted to highlight is the competitiveness scenario, which is currently in progress. Here, we are trying to build, again, scenarios that will allow us to view jobs and skills and the impact on specific sectors. And here, we're doing the three d plus the fourth d, which is not on the slide, but it's defense, it's digital, it's decarbonization, and then the overriding trend that we should never forget is still demography. It's the one that drives the labour market most profoundly. So here, we're trying to, again, reflect the assumptions, in this case, of the Draghi report, and then look at, you know, also the Competitiveness Compact and the Net Zero Industry Act. They are all included as a baseline, and then we're trying to play with, you know, more investments in AI.
Do we want to match, at least to some extent, what's going on in The United States in terms of investment or not? And we can play with these kinds of scenarios and then see what will happen in the labor markets and what are the impacts on education and training programs. But to also give you what I just said about demography, if we look at these four forecast scenario baselines, we see that there's an amount of about 25,000,000 job openings until 2035, but just over 9,000,000 of these 25,000,000 will be for new jobs, while the remaining almost 15,000,000 will be just replacement demand. So never forget, we're always looking for the hot new thing, but often it's just a replacement that is needed. And replacement may also be needed in occupations where you would believe that there's a technological revolution going on.
My favorite example, lorry drivers. I mean, there's so many of them retiring in the next couple of years that we still need to train for lorry driving if we all believe that in ten, fifteen years, you know, lorries will drive by themselves. So that is something that should always be considered at the same time. I would also like to, if we move on to the right-hand side of this slide, highlight the tripartite exchange seminar. It's something we've done together with Eurofound in the past, but we're now doing it across all the agencies that are around this table.
And we are looking and have invited 45 representatives of the social partners to work with us on the impact of digital AI. It's a sequence of online sessions but combined with an in-person event, which will be hosted by the EESC here in June in Brussels. And we're looking very forward to this because the first additions that we have done in the past have been proven very successful and resonate very well with Iwailo, what he just said in the last round saying that social partnership and social dialogue is often something that can unblock amazing things if we team up together to achieve the objectives that we have. The skills forecast highlights mentioned already. And with this, I mean, I have one more slide, but I've used up my 6 minutes.
So for now, I would rest it at that.
You can present the last one.
Jürgen Siebel
Can I? Okay. Then, but this is also a quick one if it now works because that is kind of our highlights. And here, I mean, I don't wanna read you all these numbers, but just that you know that also CineFop, you are our discharge and our budgetary authority, and what you give us, we use wisely. You see very good numbers in terms of budget execution, etc., also in terms of our environmental indicators at the very bottom.
But the key currency that you see on this slide is really our take up in citations, middle on the left of the slide, for work that is really informing policy documents. We're very proud of this. And also at the top, you see a lot of the indicators for how we interact with our stakeholders and with the wider public. And I think the numbers speak for themselves, so I don't want to delve too much. And then there's a little QR code on the top right, which leads you to a document that you also have in your meeting guides, which is our annual report, where if you're interested in what we did in '25, you can look at it more deeply.
Thank you very much.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And we then move on to the questions. I have some who have requested the floor already beforehand, but if there are other MEPs that wish to ask, please raise your cards already, starting with Miss Callemans from.
Estelle Ceulemans
Thank you. Well, we are waiting for the package. Obviously, professional mobility is very important, being able to work in the European Union, coming from a third country, in particular when there are some jobs which are lacking. So it's obviously very important, therefore, to recognize skills and diplomas. But all this seems terribly complicated.
There are obstacles which exist to this professional job mobility. So, in your view, why is that? And how can we get rid of it? And secondly, the technological changes need an adaptation. And very often, it's a question of one year to another.
For example, in IT, you train workers for coding, and six months after, one year later, you have to adapt it. So again, how can we allow the member states to put them in a position to adapt so quickly to this exponential change?
Yes, please.
Jürgen Siebel
Yeah. Thank you very much. Very good question. And, of course, also, it keeps us awake at night that, obviously, it's complicated and there are many, many obstacles. I think one we are working, of course, in the space of vocation education and training, and clearly one obstacle, but this is there's also, I believe, no real political will to overcome it, is that we do not have something like Bologna for vocation education and training.
We don't. So, and deliberately so. So that means that, you know, being a plumber educated in Spain may be something that is significantly different from being a plumber educated in Slovakia. So this is something that cannot go away. However, the translation mechanism I mentioned earlier is always the outcomes approach, which says that qualifications should be described in a way that the outputs are described.
May I mean, what can a person perform? What kind of task? What kind of job? What kind of skills? Except as opposed to inputs related, how many hours were you trained in welding?
Yeah. That is not important. It's important what kind of welding you are capable of doing. So that is something where the baseline is being produced. And then we in CineFob, we work a lot also with networks of experts where we're trying to bring together people who work on validation, on recognition of qualifications, etcetera, so that we can also share best practices, facilitate an exchange via these networks how to implement respective change.
In terms of the technology, yes, we have this issue that, you know, lifelong learning is of the essence. That's also why it's important to really measure annual participation in upskilling and reskilling activities like the Porto Summit, object 39, something like this, and the trajectory is not promising. It will not lead to 60, even if it grows. So that requires us to really think anew. And here, I may have said this in this room before when I was here before, one of the key levers will be to unleash the power of the workplace itself.
The workplace is an ideal learning venue. If you and that it builds a wonderful bridge to also job quality because when we talk about shortage professions, it's not only that there's a shortage of skills or of labor. It's often also, there's, if you will, a shortage of job quality. So for us, investing in jobs have to go together. And part of the investment in jobs is usually that the workplace itself is designed in a way that makes it more conducive to learning, so by being more challenging, etc.
So these are the avenues where we try to sort of push and go in this direction. I want to mention, however, because you mentioned coding and adapting. There's another animal in the room. It's AI where we see that maybe especially coding or professions where we have told people for decades to become an ICT expert. You know, now it's one of the professions that is most vulnerable to being, at least partially, taken over by AI.
And we have some very recent findings, which is what we have been preaching all the time. We see in the demand composition in labor markets, we now see an uptake of vet skills. So we see for the first time since 2022, ChatGPT introduction, we can now confirm that the composition of demand for skills is moving towards relatively higher weight of vet occupations. And that tells us again that vocational education and training is usually the line of education that can adapt most quickly to changes in technology.
Rudi Kennes
Yes. Thank you, chairman. I will speak in Dutch. Mhmm. Mister Sibel, I want to talk to you about skills and lifelong learning.
It's very high on the agenda for the EU. It's often presented as something essential for our competitiveness and for dealing with work show or employee shortages now. People very often don't have the time or the financial resources to be able to train outside their working hours. And the CDFOP research shows that access to training is unequal, and that employees with less resources take part less in training. And based on your research, how is it important that employers also take some responsibility for upskilling?
And how important is it that employees get access to training during their paid working time, especially in terms of public institutions? And employers often complain about a lack of skills in employees, but very often, these shortages have to do with the quality of the jobs, the wages, and the working conditions. So how important are those factors in your perspective to explain the shortage of skills? And are employers doing enough to train their employees? Because I come from a period, I've always worked in industry where there was always a certain level of training given so that you could advance in your job.
And now a lot of employers are turning things around, saying the responsibility lies with society, with the educational system, and we, as employers, have no responsibility.
Brigitte van den Berg
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Juergen, for your interesting presentation. I want to ask something about the survey that you announced, actually, in the first part of your presentation about the European vocational teacher survey.
Mhmm.
Brigitte van den Berg
I'm wondering if it is finished in time to actually have input on the vet strategy that the commission is gonna present. I'm also gonna work on the ENA there. So I'm very interested to incorporate the
Mhmm.
Brigitte van den Berg
Outcomes of this survey. If not, if there could be some kind of preview that could actually be part of this strategy, because I think it's one of the essentials that we really invest in teachers and see what their needs are to come up with a strong vet strategy. Next to, of course, student mobility, which I think is what should be one of the priorities, and skills portability, which we have elaborated on a lot already. So I would like to hear your answer there.
Yes, please.
Jürgen Siebel
Sorry. So thank you for the very good questions. And to your point, I think you kind of also confirmed what I had said before that quality jobs go together with training. Now, in terms of unequal access, indeed, if we look deeper at the numbers, you have this classical phenomenon. Those who need the training the most are the ones who participate the least.
Then you have the divide between large enterprises who kind of have the respective deep pockets to offer training and small and medium sized or micro companies that struggle to do this. That's why I said the learning, the design of the workplace is key because it can induce learning that kind of happens on the go instead of, you know, shipping people in the afternoon to a classroom. But, of course, it's again, there's also unequal abilities because this is something if you have an HR department, you can think about how can I design the workplace so that it's challenging, how can I give people the autonomy in the work so that they can try out things, etcetera? So that, again, boils down to the same kind of problem. And here, do employers do enough?
I mean, the employers always claim, and they have some point in that, that 80% of upskilling is actually already employer-financed. But, again, it's not evenly distributed. And, if we look at the 38% where we are, then we know it is not enough. Yeah? Whether wherever the finance comes from, it has to improve.
And now, of course, there's a number of initiatives in terms of training funds turning in terms of individual learning accounts where we're trying to build from a policy side, vehicles that allow to finance training, and this should definitely be used. But you mentioned a key point that, you know, we have to consider who benefits. If you want to know how I can increase investment, you have to think who the beneficiary is. And for me, there are always three beneficiaries of training. And number one is the person who's being trained because they acquire new skills, and it improves their employability and maybe even their earnings potential.
The second beneficiary is clearly the employer because the employer gets, you know, more up-to-date skill sets that they can use in producing the outputs. And the third and maybe most important beneficiary is all of us because society usually benefits when employees are employable and when companies have prime quality employees to be competitive in the market. So it is always an issue of sharing the investment. Yeah? So there must be a co-investment from all three involved parties.
That's usually what works best. And, again, that's why I'm always looking at Evalo when I'm talking about that's why also social partners are so crucial. And there are great models where social partner organizations have managed at sectoral level to finance upskilling and reskilling, especially even in industries where there are micro companies are the norm because then they can, you know, maybe jointly finance training centers through a fund that is generated with social partner agreement or levy fund finance or whatever. And then these things usually have great success rates. So, again, I'm advocating bringing the stakeholders together that define what's going on in terms of training, and then, you will be able to have better results.
And you mentioned, sorry. I wanted to make one more remark. Yes. There's not only quality jobs and too bad quality. There's also a mismatch.
So when we talk about skills gaps, we often overlook that there is also skills underutilization at the same time. So often enough, people bring skills to the workplace every day. However, you know, because they're in some monotonous regime, they do not have an opportunity to, so if you look to fill your skills gaps, also look at your workforce.
Jürgen Siebel
Of course. Sorry. Sorry. Yes. I only answered the first question.
No. Of course. The vet teacher survey. No. It's in the field right now.
And when it's in the field, that's very early because then when it's all back, the data, then it takes us twelve months, eighteen months until we can really have robust findings. But when you speak about the so for the Vet strategy, it will definitely be too late. But if you want to preview or if there's some interest in what are our preliminary ideas, what are our conjectures that we have so far and where we see maybe first elements of validation in the responses we get, you know our number, and we can try and set up something.
Li Andersson
Good. Now we move over to Ilan, starting with Mr. Wei Anjou for the first presentation. Six minutes, please.
Speaker 4
Thank you very much. So just to introduce my intervention now, to recall the numbers of labor mobility in the EU from the intra EU mobility report. I mentioned the 90,000,000 non-EU citizens before. Now this is the EU citizens and residents. And you see it's a 40,000,000 number.
And in total, you get about 33, 35,000,000 people that we cover. And to add to that also the hundreds of thousands of companies, small and medium enterprises that employ mobile workers and then use mobility of services and labor in their activity. So this is what we cater to, and this is how we structure our work. And when we established ELA five years ago, we started with three fundamental principles to implement, in our work. And first was to be very concrete, practical, and operational.
Second, to be service-oriented and policy neutral. And third, to advance digitalization and adoption of digital tools for labor mobility. And in my first intervention, I mentioned that, for the next years, we plan to have more efficiency, more effectiveness and impact, and also streamline and focus. And, for my presentation now, I would like to take you a little bit on how we will fine tune our work across the three operational lines of actions, enforcement and analysis, information and U. And cooperation capacity building, and also two horizontal digitalization and organization.
And, the operational lines of actions will be backed by a strong coordination mechanism to ensure the integration of Ella's activities and streamlining, and that's also one of the main issues that came out of the evaluation published of the commission published in May 2025. And I will not go into this. Also, it produced this endeavor from the commission for a fair labor mobility. So I'm now concentrating on what we will do to extract the most from the mandate that we have now in the present. So on enforcement and analysis, Ella will aim to shift its enforcement approaches towards more risk-based and targeted inspections, strengthen cooperation with social partners in enforcement and analysis, systematize the selection of enforcement priorities, mainstream tackling undeclared work, connect better with all operational areas as well as national policies and actions, enhance operational analysis and its links with enforcement, develop methodologies and practical guidelines to improve inspections and their impact in complex and high-risk fields, also increase multidisciplinary approaches and very importantly, focus on post-inspection phase and deterrence effects and increase prevention activities.
On information and EURES, information activity should move more towards localized, tailored campaigns for specific communities and groups or specific enforcement issues. Use anticipatory communication for the provision of information and the development of digital tools. Minimize user effort by anticipating information needs and delivering relevant content before the user actively seeks it, and information should move towards the end user, not the other way around. Increase buy-in and joint actions with member states, social partners, the commission, and other relevant partners. Work more with organizations that have direct contact with our target groups like social partners, regional, local authorities, NGOs, and also audit information campaigns to measure impact.
On EURES, we will continue to update services for the EURES network, develop the usability, usage, and integration of the portal, and we'll also look for more synergy with public employment services and the European Commission. We will try to outline a branding niche for the EURAZ portal, including three actionable principles: fair recruitment, also more emphasis on job seekers and employers with limited access to private online platforms and vulnerable categories with the principle of nobody left behind, and also modern technologies for as free public services. Then on capacity and cooperation, we'll continue to develop the mutual learning and understanding programs as effective forms of cooperation and exchange among member states, mediation through cooperation as a guiding principle, shift the focus from broad thematic events to more targeted cooperation and supporting regional formats and groupings, strengthen the connection with the activity of the national liaison officers and coordination and planning activities and also, many others in the same area. Continue to invest big in capacity building, especially in training of EU legislation, proficient staff, multidisciplinary approaches, certification, adoption of new technologies, and increasing administrative capacity. Also on digitalization, we plan to build, on the brand of ELA Tech as a hub for dissemination, open exchange, and promotion of innovative technologies and accelerate research and development in AI and digitalization, including support to member states, European Commission, and social partners in implementing digital solutions.
So this is in large just to give you a quick update on some of the highlights for 2026, if you can put them on the screen. We will launch the long-term care report and info campaign in April. In May, the Ella annual conference on tackling undeclared work, and our mainstream activities in this regard. In July, we'll start a campaign on light commercial vehicles. This is the entry into force of posting rules in this field.
And, of course, just to conclude with an invitation for the committee to visit our headquarters in Bratislava as you deem fit, but, we're looking to expand on this information and to give you more and have more opportunities to engage with you. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And I will next give the floor to our EP experts, Mr. Jan Kremes, for the next two minutes.
Jan Cremers
Yes. Thank you, Chair. I will be very brief because I have, as usual, sent you a written contribution that you can read and where, in fact, let's say, a follow-up is formulated of the documents that I've sent you in recent years. I would like to pinpoint three issues. One is, let's say, some elements of the commission's assessment of last year, because, in fact, that assessment talks about the improvement of the execution of Eyla activities.
Something that we, from the very beginning, also here in this committee have said, is that it is an operational agency, it's an operational authority, and that is very relevant. And I think that should also be, let's say, the aim for the near future. But on the other hand, also how to enhance synergies. And if we talk about enhancing synergies, then we also have to realize that there are issues brought in from this committee in the past that were not self-evident. I just mentioned the issue of third-country nationals.
We discussed that here in the committee three, four years ago, and the first reaction was not very positive to hand that over also to ELA. Wills or argument was once people are inside the European Union, then they can derive rights from the fact that they have a labor contract. And then it can be, certainly, in situations of transnational activity, an issue. A second thing that I would like to stress is the whole issue of information. A lot of the information that is distributed is not only coming from the social departments, but also from other departments.
And if there is a lack of consistency there, we really have to look at the information that is spread over and towards SMEs, towards individuals who want to work in another member state. And a final issue that I would like to mention here is that the ongoing debate about deregulation inside the European Commission is tricky in that respect, that in larger projects, inspection services are confronted with virtual corporate entities. And if the effect of the deregulation is that, yes, it is possible for non genuine actors to enter into the business world, then that can be very counterproductive. We have, in very recent months, also seen that ELA has established a task force for larger projects also to tackle, let's say, situations where there are a lot of actors coming from different countries over a longer period of time. And then you have to realize, and I always quote in my first experience in that respect, the Olympic swimming pool in Barcelona in the late 80s was built by 38 subcontractors.
You can imagine how complicated it is for Eila and for the inspection service to tackle such kinds of issues, but it is relevant to look beyond the borders of the mandate of this committee if you want to tackle that in an efficient way. Thank you very much.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And we then move on to the questions. And I have first Mr. Lenners from the EPP.
Jeroen Lenaers
Yes. Thank you very much, madam chair, mister Peranjou. Thank you for being with us today. I think it was exactly, more or less, a year ago when we last met in the context of this committee. I think then you just also published the report on third country nationals, and they're often difficult contractual positions also in the EU labor market.
And that really also strengthens, I think, the idea that ELA's competencies when it comes to third country nationals should be clarified. I know if you look at the beginning of the European Labor Authority, we were there when we established it, and there was a clear, okay, from the parliament. We had a lot of wishes, but we also accepted in the end the fact that let's get ELA started. Let's not put too much, you know, tools into the toolbox to make sure that what they have, you can start working, you can prove yourself, you can take away some of the perhaps fear in the member states about the operation of a labor authority. And then from then on, we can build further.
And I think this is the moment where we are now. If you look back on the five years, I think ELA is doing a great job within the mandate that we have given you. But at the same time, it's clear, and it was also in your presentation, that the limitations of the mandate also really hamper the true potential of ELA. So this is the next step. We're waiting with a lot of anticipation for the commission's proposal for the revision of ELA's mandate.
I think when it comes to third country nationals, I think when it comes to the voluntary nature often of participation of member states. Also, some clear guidance on the legal value of, for instance, evidence gathered in investigations in one member state, for judicial proceeding in other member states. The role of ELA also when it comes to data protection rules, etcetera, in providing analysis, I think is very important. So for us, I think next year, it was not on your highlights for 2026, but for us, the highlight must be the new mandate of ELA and how we can help you strengthen the agency even further, and to have this battle together with the member states. So, any comment on that?
And just one minute, we like to thank Jan Klemers also for his work as an expert on behalf of the parliament in ELA. I think it's really a good example of how experts are not only there to come back with information for us, but can also really help in pushing the agency forward. So, thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And next speaker, and next question is from Missus Bishop, SMB.
Gabriele Bischoff
Also from my side, a warm welcome to discussing again. And indeed, we have seen the data you have shown that free movement is essential and that fair mobility still needs a lot to be really fair. And here, your agency plays an important role, especially also to make sure that we have enough work invested into effective protection of existing rights, but also strong action against fraud and social dumping. I'm a bit curious also from your expertise here in the revision of the regulation 883 we are doing at the moment. We see that we still have challenges here with fraudulent posting arrangements, with missing prior notifications, and really insufficient data exchange between member states.
And this undermines and continues to undermine fair mobility. So we, as parliament, always supported very strongly digital solutions. You talked about it and our ideas of a European social security pass, but also better EU infrastructure, so we have better enforcement. So on your operational experience, which concrete digital tools or improvement in cross border data exchange would make the biggest difference. And I ask for the biggest difference in preventing this social security fraud, and also strengthening enforcement.
And, be assured that we are continuing to push as a parliament that we have these digital solutions faster. And we are talking too long and delivering too slowly here.
Johan Danielsson
Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Across Europe now, we see, I think, a rapid expansion of the construction of large data centers. And many of these data centers are constructed with a complex set of subcontractors, labor intermediaries, perhaps even more than 38 in some cases. And we also see that these sites rely heavily on workers.
We have a construction site in Javelin, Sweden, for example, with Microsoft. We have 1,000 workers, 800 of them being posted. We hear from trade unions that it is impossible to get meaningful access to the site. We have examples of labor inspectors even needing the police to get access to the premises. So my question to Ella is what can be done at the European level, to meaningfully help trade unions, officials, labor inspectors to get access to these sites.
And also in connection to the risk-based approach and also this targeted inspection, can you foresee that we do something connected to these data centers? Because many of those companies that we have problems with, that the construction of one data center, are the same companies that are building these centers throughout Europe. So is this something perhaps ELA can help member states look into as well? Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you. And I have two more questions. So please keep track of them all. Mr. Kernis?
Rudi Kennes
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I want to talk to you about the labour inspectorate and the inadequate financial resources for that. And I think there are two main causes.
One, I think, is the compulsory defense expenditure, and secondly, the EU austerity. And I see in many European countries, the labor inspector is it is a very easy saving to make. It goes through very easily compared to other things. And then the commission is not a shift reducing the administrative burden, but just shifting them to agencies like the labor inspectorate. So I want to ask you from the Ella perspective, what trends do you see in the ability of Ella to detect failings and shortcomings in national inspectorates.
And, as regards what the speaker said earlier, I'm from Willowbrook in Belgium where there's a Decathlon. We have a deckathon. And then they have to, our work inspectorate has to represent the employees. And we have, it's a very strange situation there in Belgium with Decathlon. I'd like to ask you about that.
And final question, has this recent initiative in the EU made your work with labor inspectorates more difficult or easier?
Sorry.
Marc Angel
Thank you very much. Actually, it's a question I wanted to ask in the first round. But since Ella, if I'm well informed, will take the chairmanship of the European Agency network, I can ask you that in that quality. Resources are often a problem. You know, we have this tight budget, and we are very interested here in good working conditions.
And in the agencies, more people are having very precarious contracts, temporary agents, contract agents, up to 80% in certain agencies. Even now, a lot go to interim private agencies to recruit staff. And this is not good for institutional memory, and also for operative agencies. This is really problematic. And I was wondering, will that be part of your program to see, to defend now in the framework of the next MFF to really convince that we need to have better resources, also better working conditions in the agencies.
And not that contract agents and temporary agents don't do bad work. Don't misunderstand me. But it is if you want good working conditions all over Europe, we have to clean our own household. So, thank you.
Speaker 4
Thank you. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the support. All very substantial questions, so I'll try to go through each one of them. First of all, I tried not to comment on the future, fare mobility package on the revision of the mandate for ELA.
Try to concentrate here on what we can do with the existing mandate, because that's also our responsibility to extract the maximum from what we have now. But indeed, the revision would help to fine tune the expression of our mandate and how we address many of these issues that were not foreseen first time or were put aside as mister Lenas has said. And, also, what I think is we can and we have a good basis now to approach this because what we think we did is that we gained the trust and cooperation of member states. I remind that Ally is based on a model of cooperation of voluntary participation of member states. And the fact that, now all member states practically, want to cooperate with us, they are supportive of us, and they gain our, I mean, confidence in us, in how we deliver, then it's a plus for the next phase.
So, hopefully, we can build on that. Now on, the question from Miss Bishop, indeed, it's very much of what we do now to find real digital solutions, to find platforms to help member states, and to go not waiting for regulation. And I'll just give one example. Last year, with the mediation of Ella, France and Italy signed an agreement to exchange large sets of data exactly to counter social security fraud, to compare the data and to see if a person is employed in one country but taking unemployment benefits in another country. And this proved very useful in practice to detect social security fraud, and many other countries wanted to sign and want to sign similar agreements.
So Spain said, I want to sign similar to France. Germany is interested. Other countries. So we said, why not putting, so Ella offered that we create this platform where all countries will adhere to this and exchange lawsuits of data to combat the social security fraud. We put together a charter of principles and also, practical issues of interoperability, and then they sign, so they don't need to sign 27 agreements between 27 countries.
So imagine the number and then so this is how we can do things in practical terms based on voluntary participation of member states without waiting for regulations to happen and to come necessarily from Brussels. So we can work this, and we can put our capabilities and mediation to work. Then on the issue of complex operations, like you mentioned, data centers. Again, this is a direction where we want to take our enforcement activities because we cannot and I mentioned streamlining and efficiency. We cannot go, and I will give just one example.
We cannot go just to verify a small company and from road transport. To verify a small company with just a few trucks to detect and to spend thousands of euros and the activity and the time of many inspectors to detect that one worker should have received 50 more euros for one posting declaration and in other cases, 15 more euros because this is really not efficient. So we want to switch our operations towards large operations, more complex, and to go for companies either with a subcontracting chain that is big. And you mentioned 32 subcontractors for a big construction operation. So we want to go for these big operations first.
And then to develop tools, analysis tools that we can detect. So for example, a company with a thousand trucks, not the one with the three, four trucks. So big operations first and then to put analysis, risk assessment, and employ different ways to detect possible fraud or irregularities. And, again, we want to also reinforce and strength on labor inspectors because we work with them, and it is our interest that they also have the capacity to do these actions. And this is what we want to see if we can get more flexibility from the European Commission to work with European funds to strengthen national inspectorates.
We do it anyway with our training activities with how we help coordination, not only between member states, but also within member states because, based on Ella's action, also institutions in the country start to work better together. Like, they work better with police or with tax authorities, and they develop their own internal cooperation based on our action. But, to see also if we can do more to specifically strengthen the capacity of inspectorates in every country, also using European funds that could be available to member states and to channel this through Ella. And this also comes to, to your question indeed starting already from March 1. Ella took over the presidency of the whole network of agencies, so EU one, European Agencies Network.
And it is our program to engage more with the parliament, but also with the council, to make sure that, first of all, agencies are seen and have the right visibility, about their role, about what is the type of tasks that they implement and how they implement it, and also to address it in the discussion about the future MFF, about resources, about how resources are allocated, and also about the flexibility that I've just mentioned. If there are no more resources, then at least give us the right flexibility to use better the European funds in general.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And now we move on to EU OSHA, starting with the presentation from Mister Kochberg.
Speaker 5
Thank you, Chair. And the first slide will be up soon, I'm sure. And it will present some sorry. Some figures that I'm sure members of this committee are well aware of in terms of the burden represented by poor occupational safety and health. Figures from Eurostat, if we translate them into losses per day, deaths, that's ten workers dying every day from work related injury, around 600 from work related illnesses.
And if we're talking about the economic impact that I mentioned earlier at the EU level, that's approximately equivalent to 3% of GDP. Now occupational safety and health is an area where there are 24 directives. The framework directive dating back to 1989, since then many other directives. I think it's not a coincidence that EU OSHA was set up in 1994, the year after member states had to give force to the framework directive. And that recognizes the role of EU-OSHA in supporting this, ACWI.
We need data. We need analysis to work out whether the regulations, the policies are actually having the desired effect, to make sure we're up to date, to look about what might be coming up on the horizon. Under Uosha's data at the moment, we're supporting obviously the updating of CMRD, display screen equipment directive, workplaces directive, and so on. But we heard also about the importance of legislation resulting in improved working conditions and fewer illnesses and fewer injuries. So we need to be able to support employers.
We need to be able to provide the tools at the workplace, the guidance that allows effective prevention with as low administrative load as possible. And very important as well, we can't take for granted that everybody knows about this. We need to raise awareness. We need to mobilize networks, and we need to ensure that we foster a positive prevention culture. So these are the three pillars, the three strategic lines of action that the agency works on.
And the areas, the topics that we're actually focused on during our upcoming planning period really relate to those that are creating the largest burden. So we have work-related cancer, the leading cause of work-related mortality, followed by the second highest cause, circulatory diseases, heart disease, stroke, for example. We're also starting this work this year, research work on accidents to prevent work-related injuries. We're finalizing a research program on mental health and psychosocial risks, and launching a campaign, as I mentioned just earlier, on the topic of mental health and psychosocial risks. From the sector perspective, in common with our sister agencies, we also have a strong focus on the health care and social care sector.
We've been supporting the green transition for many years, as I mentioned, of work on climate change. And currently, we're focused on OSH risks related to climate change and in general providing support based on our expertise as is needed. To give you a little bit more detail about the timing, I won't go through all the dates of these projects, but these are research projects that are giving insights on these core issues. So looking ahead through our foresights on climate change and related crises, then four or five year in-depth research studies looking at these specific issues that I've just detailed in the previous slide. And also all of.
Speaker 5
Being fed through the quantitative data that we're gathering through our workplaces survey, ESNA, where we ask the person responsible for health and safety in the workplace about day-to-day practices, about drivers, about obstacles, about psychosocial, about worker participation. And we're just gonna be publishing the data from that survey on an online dashboard this year. And then OSHPULSE survey, which is where we're asking workers about how they experience work-related illnesses, how they are experiencing digital risks, psychosocial risks, climate-related risks. And an important survey, there is a highly complex one that we did on workers' exposure survey on cancer risk factors, where we identified actual exposure levels for 42 substances, 24 of them related to the CMRD updates. So a lot of data, and we heard earlier about how difficult it is for Missus Kuhlman's to access all of this data.
We try and present it in one-stop dashboard through the OSH barometer, and I'd very much encourage you to seek the information through that interface. To give you an example of some of the data that we are gathering, this is data from the OSHPULSE. I won't go through the results. You it there. But we're looking at climate-related risks, mental health, for example, the stigma around raising mental health issues in the workplace, and in general health-related problems related to work.
Behind these, are very big differences by country, sector, age group, by gender. And all of that is giving us the opportunity to analyze, to match it onto the policies and regulations that are in place, and to identify where tools and guidance are more needed. I'll just finish by highlighting our online interactive risk assessment tool as an example of where we took an instrument that had been developed in The Netherlands, risk identification, evaluation. We adapted it, and now it is being used by 18 member states to co-create online tools to help micro and small enterprises carry out their risk assessment. There's about 400 tools tailored to sector, occupation, risk, and 400,000 users with over 600,000 risk assessments.
So really making quite an important impact. And that's complemented then by our e-tools, for example, managing dangerous substances or more recent guidance that's been published to support the update of CMRD, for example, around biomonitoring. The last slide is just to emphasize again the strength of our network, which is unique amongst the agencies in that it has not only competent national authorities, but in each member state also the involvement of the social partners. And we all know how that is crucial for success in occupational safety and health. Those focal points cover not only the 27 EU member states, but also EFTA, the Western Balkans, and Turkey, and soon, we hope, Moldova and Ukraine.
So we'll have more countries than Eurovision in our focal point network. And with that, I bring to an end the highlights. I would also acknowledge the comment about the working conditions in agencies, and how important that is. I would give a special thanks to the Portuguese government for lending. S.
To second national experts. It doesn't sound like a lot, but for us, it really does make a difference. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And we then go to the questions. First member on my list is mister Danielson from the S and D. And if there are other members that want to ask a question, please let me know.
Johan Danielsson
Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. Perhaps first question connecting to the question I had for Ella. Because when labor inspectors are confronting these increasingly complex structures, it also makes, of course, enforcement, but also the work of labor inspectors really difficult. So my question is the same, but directed to you from the EU OSHA.
What could be done on the EU level to strengthen labor inspectors in this new environment? In conjunction to that as well, do you have, can you do anything from the agency when member states don't behave? Because they can behave on paper. But let me give you one example. Scaffolders.
It's a really dangerous profession on construction sites. So that's why you need to have a specific certificate to do it. And journalist at the Swedish newspaper, Bignesser Betan, she managed to get it without any previous experience of a construction site in three hours. She was watched short movies, then she answered four questions. The first time, she answered all four wrong.
But surprisingly, it was the same four questions returning every time. So, eventually, within three hours, she was approved to do these professions on the construction site. And, I mean, this is not a serious way to do it. I'm sure Sweden is not the only member state where you can find these practices on part of the labor market. So what can be done for the European side to actually know that we are really enforcing, the problems as well?
Then another question, on psychosocial risk, health and safety workers, the priorities you are giving to this. From my experience, the problem many times is then that labor inspectors, they don't have hard sanction tools when it comes to preventive works. And this is especially a problem when it comes to psychosocial risk and health and safety of workers. So, have you looked into this issue? Are there examples in Member States when labor inspectors have harder tools to deal with these issues as well?
Thank you.
Thank you. And Mr. Kems?
Rudi Kennes
Yeah. Thank you, Borgester. Thank you, Chair. Mister Coburn, you talked about cancer, the main cause of work-related deaths in the EU. Almost 100,000 workers die every year from occupational cancer. Now EU Russia has found that almost half of EU workers are exposed to cancer risks at work, and you find that there are still major gaps in prevention.
And your research says that stronger action is needed to protect workers against cancer at work. Now, at the same time, the commission's recent chemicals omnibus proposes changes that would make it easier to use certain hazardous substances and products such as cosmetics and fertilizers. So this will expose workers like factory workers, farmers, refuse collectors, and hairdressers to higher risks of occupational cancer. Now, based on your research, are these changes consistent with your goal of reducing occupational cancer? And do you expect these changes to increase or decrease the risks that workers face?
And missus.
Estelle Ceulemans
I'll be speaking in French. And just very quickly as well, you know how important the question of psychosocial risks is, and thank you very much for the work that you're doing on this, because we're it's no longer a silent issue in the world of work, and it's presenting us with a number of challenges. I believe that in the introduction, spoke about a back to work study once someone had experienced a psychosocial issue at work. Could you expand upon that, please? Because there's also this question of secondary prevention, it is very important to us.
And, but in the initiative report that I'm working on, it's a bit of a blind spot. So I would like to hear more, please. Thank you.
Speaker 5
Thank you. Thank you for excellent and challenging questions. When it comes to the National Labor Inspectorates and inspectors' activities, we indeed have been researching that issue and trying to share best practices. It is the case that in some member states, the National Labor Inspectorate is under pressure and being cut, and in others, it's actually increasing. But what all have is a recognition that the challenge is greater than the resources they have.
What we've shown is how, in some cases, digital tools, in some cases sharing data across different regulatory or policy areas, are helping a better targeting of those limited inspection resources. Also, inspectors have been given the tools to be able to be more effective. And even the pandemic showed us how a lot can actually be done remotely. Not everything has to be a face-to-face inspection. The role that EU OSHA has when member states don't behave.
Well, I mean, we're monitoring the situation through our surveys. We can say that at that level. We're also identifying and sharing examples of good practice. And that's not only good practice for prevention by employers in the workplace, but also, as I say, for labor inspectorates or at the policy level. So while we're it's not our role to be the policeman, I think we are able to identify successful examples that could help fix some of the problems like the ones you highlight.
And psychosocial risks are a challenge for both employers, as shown by our surveys, and also for labor inspectors. But there are solutions and there is guidance out there. We have developed, for example, an online interactive risk assessment tool on harassment, sexual harassment. The actual prevention through risk assessment will be one of the priority areas that we tackle for 4 months in our two year campaign. So although it's a challenge and it'll be a change of mindset and practice for many, it's been there a long time and we can learn from each other.
So I think it's important not to reinvent the wheel in that sense. We do have some research on the use of sanctions versus, for example, the more supportive or advisory role of the labor inspectorates, and I can make those highlight those reports to you. To say that labor inspectorates also have a very important role in what we call orchestration. So making sure that all the contact points that an enterprise has, particularly a small one, be it professional organization, be it insurer, customer, supplier, they're all on message. They're all helping to improve the prevention of health and safety risks.
Mister Kenneth, when it comes to cancer, I think I hope you're referring to the results of our workers' exposure survey where we were looking at the circumstances of exposure, which show not only whether the substance is present, but actually what the practical prevention measures are. And with the combination of that information, we can come up with an exposure level. So indeed, we found very high percentages of exposure at a low level to ultraviolet radiation when working outdoors, auto diesel particulates when working near traffic, and a much smaller percentage of exposure, but at a high level, for example, to respirable crystalline silica, stone workers, people doing artificial stone worktops, and so on. Clearly, and in line with the hierarchy of prevention where elimination is the preferred option and collective solutions, the absence of the risk factor is the preferred situation. So anything that can reduce the incidence or the prevalence of those risk factors, the substance in the workplace is to be legally the preferred option if it's feasible.
If not, then obviously, measures have to be taken: engineering solutions, organizational solutions, and the personal protective equipment, only the very last option. And this is one of the angles as well that we're able to highlight through the research we've done in the workers' exposure survey. So I think a very important issue that you've highlighted. Mr. And Solomons, on psychosocial risks, we've got a lot of research, five years' worth of research now.
And the issue of working with mental health problems is going to be, again, one of these priority areas that we tackle over 4 months within the upcoming campaign, and we have material to support that. It'll be focused not only on helping people who have been through a mental health issue, whether work related or not, back into work, because we know that that's beneficial for recovery, it's beneficial for the enterprise and for society, but also addressing neurodiversity. So people who maybe have a condition on the neurodiverse spectrum who are also entitled to an adaptation of the job to their needs. So indeed, that's an important issue that we will be picking up on. And as you say, it's perhaps one that's been under-recognized, the secondary prevention in the area.
So we'll be happy to provide you with that information. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And then it's time for the ETF, starting with the presentation by Missus Torsti.
Speaker 7
Thank you very much, dear chair, dear members. With the memory of last year, where visuals were a challenge. We, this year, tried to prepare in such a way that what I also say needs to make sense, whether there are visuals or not. So let us see as we are progressing. But continued and new challenges are both characteristics, actually, when we were looking at sort of how to summarize this year's work program, and it's, of course, natural as we are in the 2127 period.
As I started in the presentation in the beginning, and as we can now see, we are. And then the dual mandate, geographical and thematic, is, of course, the one that characterizes ETF work. It's the agents that serve as a unique EU agency working outside the EU in the skills for a global Europe. And, hence, geographic priorities and emerging priorities here, a little bit in-depth. But I will also say a few words about those dimensions, about the work with other agencies as we were invited to, and some key events towards the end. But data geographic, focus.
The of course, we have to start with the enlargement and eastern partnerships. We support, this year, very much the candidate potential candidate countries. You know, some countries have declared 2028 as a goal, so there is a lot of work. There is a work to align the skills, labor market policies, and education with the EU standards and approaches as much as possible. As practical building blocks, just to illustrate, for instance, the veteran adult learning reforms, qualifications frameworks, labor market policies, and, generally speaking, stronger evidence in the policy work.
In particular with Ukraine, but, of course, not only, we are working increasingly to develop methods and tools to work in the crisis and recovery context, so to be able to continue in the fragile settings so that these skills really remain part of the reconstruction work. As I mentioned then, with enlargement, the second really high priority for '26 and this year is the Mediterranean pact for the Mediterranean, which was titled people to people jobs and mobility. ETF was supporting the development of the pact last year, and now as the work continues to work towards improving the skills for jobs, clean energy, circular mobility. There, I was thinking it's probably good to illustrate some figures. And if we just look at the Mediterranean, South Mediterranean region here in pink, so we have about half of the population that is 30.
So it's really one of the most useful populations that we have on the globe. And, of course, when we move further south, that same population trend is there because it's good for us to remember that the migration corridor also to Europe very much, of course, from the southern parts of the African continent comes to the Mediterranean, and hence, it's such an important part for us. Each of the partner countries, we have about 115% of the EU population, but about 85% of the GDP. So that also gives the characteristics of the countries we are discussing when we talk about skills development, human capital development. Or if we take the figure of needs that we all know quite well, not educational in employment, when the EU average is around 22. Sorry.
Around 11, in the countries where we work, it's about 22. So in all figures we can take, we see the same trends. Finally, in geography, of course, we also work in the other geographic areas, currently with specific projects with the African Union and Central Asia. And what we noticed is that they can take experience of ETF, it can be mobilized in other areas. Now when we have the EU India strategy agenda, it refers to vocational excellence, and that is one of the works that we've been doing in the past years.
And the talent partnerships, of course, are also now being developed beyond the Mediterranean into Pakistan, Bangladesh, possibly also Senegal, and Nigeria. So to perhaps summarize the work with the countries, it really goes through the three services ETF does. So monitoring and analysis, then foresight and skills intelligence, and finally, policy advice. And it seems to be my fate that I always get little delays with the pictures, but let us not care about that. So that's the cycle in which we also do publications, and as you know, they are always available for you.
Then the emerging priorities, if we move from geography to a little bit beyond, only geography. So one emerging priority definitely is they are working with the private sector and the IFIs. We signed, in '25, an agreement that is now becoming into force with the European Investment Bank for gender and equality facility, and the global gateway context also very much underlines the role of IFIs and cooperation with the private sector for us and investments in general. And, of course, in all that, the skills portability that we already discussed plays a very important role. Another stream that we've developed in the past years and we see growing is the work with some of the member states, meaning commish EU member states, to find synergies to the actions outside the EU.
And just to give examples that are very relevant this year of the common actions, cooperation in Ukraine on skills with several member states. And, for instance, in a couple of weeks, we are doing an event in Tanzania together with Belgium on the centers of vocational excellence. Thematically, colleagues in particular, of course, Zedefo mentioned the AI digital green. Those are, of course, files that are very topical still, but we definitely see increasing need and interest for the resilience, security, defense-related skills analysis, skills foresight, and understanding what is happening in the various systems, as well as for the sectoral approach related and also the skills portability and mobility. Then as promised, on the work done together with the colleagues, the visual is actually from the ETF governing board that is chaired by Mario Nava, and here, he gave a speech agencies first that we also open for all our staff.
So to kind of also illustrate with the staff members that we work together. And there, of course, it takes different formats from procurement into shared methodologies and services as we do, for instance, with Ocean accounting. But there is another point I want to make on the synergies, and that's actually the added value I believe that the ETF has for the colleagues here, but also others. We discuss it in the EU context as well, and that's the work with the third countries externally. Namely that as it's been thirty years working with the different governments, EU delegations in the countries, different services here in Brussels, so that is something that we also bring to the common table.
And finally, key events this year, some just to highlight, skill summit in Turin in November, the joint event with EU agency that was already referred to by Jurgen using the council presidencies both in Cyprus and Irish presidency, as they come and, of course, very important again in the summer in Poland, the Ukraine recovery conference. In the pictures, we have the first ever EU-Egypt summit where we were a part of the preparations. So to conclude, the role of ETF remains as a key EU actor in human capital development in these most boring geopolitical times. We do our best really to bridge to build the bridge between the EU policies and the global partners so that we support the EU external relations with the long term impact and adaptability, I would like to say, good value for money and efficiency in that context. So, dear chair, that was for our side.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And we also have the two EP experts with us here, Mister Fotopoulos and Missus Littenbergen. So you both have the floor in this order each, please.
Speaker 39
Anderson, honorable members of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, honorable director, Missus Thorstein. I'm happy to be back in the European Parliament for the annual exchange of views on the ETF agency. In my view, the agency is working continuously with its partners in promoting education and training. With regards to the ETF work plan, the agency continues to focus on delivering its core services with special focus on the quality of learning and new methods of teaching and learning, including adult education, upskilling, and reskilling of labor force. Active labor market policies to support transition and establish new tools and methods to steer supply and demand.
Speaker 38
Cooperation within sectors and among stakeholders to support excellence in skills development, sustainability, and social fairness through education and training. ETF has a close and continuous collaboration with the commission and DG AMPLE, and through participating in various events, conferences, workshops, and partners, the agency is raising awareness on the importance of hardening the best skills from the EU, but also from outside the EU in order to address skills shortages and promote best training methods in addressing future challenges. Our interaction as members of the governing board is constant and comprehensive as regards the application of internal rules, notification, and procedures. As a nonvoting member, I feel I have been included in all relevant correspondence where necessary, and I believe that the director, missus Torsti, and all the board have established a channel of direct information and communication within the nonvoting experts. I'm committed, and I have been fully at the disposal of the agency and the governing board.
The agency is constantly exploring new avenues to cooperate beyond the neighborhood, and this requires a good reflection on the deployment of resources and complementarity with other EU actions. In order to save resources, the agency exploits synergies and seeks to improve cost efficiency. ETF has developed a mechanism and efficient channels for exchange of information and cooperation with the other related agencies as well. Closing my intervention, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in the discussion today, and please let me reconfirm that I am at the disposal of the honorable members of this committee. Thank you.
Speaker 40
Dear members, dear presidency, thank you very much for this possibility to exchange views. And, well, I think we have to start at one point first, beat the ETF or also the other agencies. We are confronted with a big geopolitical and economic change in the presence with challenges that will really be must be a focus for our work in all the agencies set for us. The new focus of the European Union on competitiveness is very important also for our work in the agency, and the ETF has an important role to play in this, particularly when it comes to competitiveness, skills, indispensable prerequisites for future proof competitive competitiveness. Without good training and skills development, neither information nor performance in the working place will be of big success.
Speaker 41
And here comes an important part for the role of the ETF. It's not only that we have to look at our member states, but also at our neighbors. We heard a lot about contacts to those states where all the work or some of the work has come from. And aligning our educational schemes and our trainings in all the member states and the neighbors, a little bit more than right now, will be very important for the future of work in this whole area. We see that in all member states and in all neighboring states, educational systems and training systems, work training systems, speed on the working place or be it in schools, is under pressure to change, to change also because of the challenges of artificial intelligence which are coming up.
Speaker 40
So I think the work of ETF will be very important for the acceptance of qualifications, since qualifications can be adapted also in our member states to standards that we can agree on. And this will also have a positive impact on portabilities of qualifications, which is a very important point because as a practitioner, you know that the differences are enormous. So I think that ETF will continue to address these new challenges for workplaces, for the working environment, and for education, training, skills. And together with the other agencies, presentations and new initiatives will be of utmost value for the union itself. Thank you very much.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much to both of you. And we then move on to the members' questions. I first have Missus Le Callennec.
Isabelle Le Callennec
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm going to be speaking in French. Thank you very much for the presentation of the ETF for training, which also involves vocational training in the partner countries, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, Central Asia. I have a question. Is the target of the agency to contribute to train people from those member states so that they find work in their own country?
Or is the idea to train those people to have skills for the European countries who need those skills? Because, as we know, there are some sectors in Europe today which need manpower. So we vote on a legal tax on employment. And unemployment continues to be present in our countries. In France, it's on the increase, in particular youth unemployment.
And very often, we have certain comments from those countries which are saying, but we need to keep our skills. We also need those skills to develop our company. So my question would be, what is the agency doing on that? What is your final objective in terms of increasing skills for those people so that they can find a job? Thank you.
And missus.
Thank.
Estelle Ceulemans
You, sir. You can keep your headset on. This will be French too. So thank you, miss. I received your presentation.
We know the key role of your foundation in training and vocational mobility internationally, but also in terms of solidarity and cohesion. And I'd pick up on something that was said earlier about migration, which would be the response, whether we like it or not, to the challenges facing the European Union. So the first question is about the talent pool. This platform is gonna be set up allowing third country nationals to come here more easily. Under what conditions is open to question, and the question of a social dumping, so on.
But are you associated with this? And have you looked at this initiative to determine the existing training needs already? And secondly, what measures can be taken to ensure a right to remain for people who have done training in third countries? Because the question of the brain drain is not really the solution for Europe, and especially in terms of international solidarity. You.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And I have no further request for the, ah, yes, mister Anger. Sorry. Good.
Marc Angel
Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. You man you mentioned the gender equality facility, and we know that the women's human capital is undervalued in many of our neighboring regions. I see in Algeria, for example, only 14% participation of women in the labor market. Can you give us concrete examples and successes on how you reach to increase this participation of women in labor markets in the regions you work with.
Li Andersson
And now I think I have no further requests for the floor. So, missus Torti, please.
Speaker 7
Okay. Thank you. In a way, interrelated questions, all touching in one way or another, mobility. Let me start with the first one and the target where the answer could be very shortly both or yes and but to be a bit more specific. As I think I referred here today and also before that all work that ETF does on the skills portability on labor migration takes the angle of a way of three angles.
So the angle of the individual, the angle of the country of origin, and the angle of the EU or the member states. And that, I think, was at the heart of the question as well. And we've also, I think even when I was actually at first time in a parliament hearing, which was in 2023, asked for this particular job, I was also asked about this. And I remember saying that one of the things I was actually impressed with when getting to know ETF a bit more in-depth was the analytical work that has been done already at that time on different concepts such as brain drain, but also brain gain, and the kind of complexities of the issue itself. What we actually see, for instance, in the Western Balkans currently is a very different, also new, migration dynamics.
Last year, after our last hearing here, there was the first ever migration event organized by Montenegro where they had brought also representatives of the Bangladesh government to discuss because in the Western Balkan countries, if I recall correctly, for instance, in Bosnia, the number three country actually of people coming currently is Nepal. When it used to be the neighboring countries, it is increasingly actually countries from further away. So we see very many types of dynamics in our countries, and hence, the angle of the agency is to look at that of the skilling from the three services that we do. So we monitor and analyse the current situation, look at the foresight, the future needs both in the country and in those countries where people are looking to migrate, and then in the policy advice, which is, of course, the most difficult discussion because it's a triangular list with the commission, with the countries, and we are there, the expert agency. And we discuss actually internally with our experts also how difficult it is sometimes to bring this evidence to decision makers because, obviously, it's not always an evidence you would like to have that is actually statistically there, for instance, about the people willing to leave the country for opportunities outside.
And so this brings to the question about the talent pool and as of the as part of the work and the preparatory work. So, of course, the ETF analysis have been used and are being used, and we are a part of that. And I think that what I more or less already described is exactly that sort of mechanism. If I may say, probably also a bit of an internal discussion we have in the agencies that sometimes the rhetoric around the topics is, of course, a little bit like you had streets where people either go or don't go, while the real world is, of course, much more complex. However, to have a proper evidence based analysis, again, of the numbers of people I refer to the Mediterranean region, for instance, with half of the population 30, so we already get a very different picture there.
When discussing with Bangladesh, which is one of the talent partnership countries, the whole government has prepared very systematically, actually, to work with the EU with the mechanisms we are setting up. So I think it's very important that we are there to understand what is the actual situation in the countries that the European Union has decided in particular to address, so that we understand what is the skill education skill ecosystem like and how our mechanisms such as centers of vocational excellence or policies such as youth guarantee can be meaningful and relevantly introduced. And to mister Angle's question, I almost have to see that if I have colleagues that would have given very precise examples because what I wanted to say on your very good question about the gender issue was that it's not, I mean, luckily, it's not as black and white. When we look at, for instance, the Western Balkans, one of the gender aspects there is that the participation, for instance, in STEM and in the skills related to upskilling and so on is actually higher than the EU average. So it's not that we would, in all possible ways, always look at only from a sort of challenging angle.
But, of course, when we then move to the, for instance, to the Mediterranean countries, very gendered statistics are there with us. And a very important question is then that how do you address those in, for instance, the back of Mediterranean. And it's in that context that we now have the work with the European Investment Bank to have the data, to have the work that is, for instance, colleagues have done with the Tunisian women actually about their experiences also as migrant workers and some of them who have also returned, and what we can then take from that forward. So, but I take your question about good examples where the increase is also seen in numbers and so on, and we do a little bit of homework on that. And if there is something that I wouldn't now recall directly, we'll get back to you on that if that's okay.
Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. And then, last but absolutely not least, we have Eurofound, and starting with mister Kaufin's presentation.
Ivailo Kalfin
Thank you very much, madam chair. Yes. I'm in splendid isolation here. Can I have the remote, please? Because this is, thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you. And, my members, with respect to your patience and time to listen to all of us, I'll try to be very brief, and I'll try to concise my intervention into three messages: where we stand, how we contribute, and how we cooperate. First, where we stand. I mean, people found, like, set it up last year, did the 50th anniversary.
The importance is not that we were the first agencies, and then they were mushrooming, and now we have agencies and joint undertakings, more than 50 that Cosmin is chairing this powerful network. The thing is that we have analysis which is spanning over a long period of time. For example, when you take one of our flagship surveys, the European working conditions survey, it started more than thirty years ago. The quality of life survey started more than 20 years ago. So we have the continuity.
We can see what is happening with the processes in the labor market and in the social cohesion in Europe over decades. And this is something which I think is very positive. Where do we stand? The message is you can be calm. I mean, as the body which is shaping our mandate and being responsible for our discharge also.
In terms of budget implementation, in terms of KPIs, in terms of uptake of our research in key documents or academic publications, I think we are extending well, and we are still keeping CAC up compared to previous years. In terms of budget, I mean, I can report to you the last quarter for the tax report is absolutely clean. There is nothing that could be working there. Second message, where how we cope or contribute, and where we could be used mostly. These are a few examples of where we try to contribute some priorities of the European Parliament in last year in 2025.
And these are some of the major topics that you are discussing. But, also, if we look at the overall priorities of the European institutions, I think that we succeeded in adapting our work program very much to this priority. So here in these slides, I'm going to rush through, but they're at your disposal. You see that in terms of competitiveness, job quality, housing, demography, but also digitalization and AI at workspace, gender, antipoverty strategy, the green transition, we have concrete particular pieces of research that we are doing on these priorities. And I really hope that we can help, and we do help your work, but also the work of the other EU institutions with our work.
I'm not going to go through the publications. Last year, we had 183 outputs from articles to reports that are spanning over a few 100 pages. What I would like to underline is that we are still working, and this is also remarkable since the creation of FugroFound. We are working on four priorities: the working conditions, the living conditions, the industrial relations, and the social dialogue, and the developments on the employment and labor markets. So these are the four areas where we organize our work and where we contribute. So these are the possibilities and the focus on our risk of our research to help the priorities of the decision makers.
I already mentioned in the first part some of the upcoming research highlights. What I would like to mention here is that we, together with the colleagues in the other agencies, all very often give the replies of many questions that could be interesting to political to policymakers or not be interesting to policymakers. Some of them are probably not so, I would say, sexy for policy making on them. But what we see is a very good understanding of the developments in society. What happens with the rural regions, for example?
What happens with this urban rural divide? What happens with different types of division in European society? What are the reasons of these divisions, and what is also the expression in terms of trust and support for any political measures afterwards. We could give and we do give quite a lot of examples of what is happening with the very fast development of digitalization, the impact of climate change, how this is perceived. So most, I mean, not most, but almost all of our research is very much based on the point of view of the citizens, of the workers and the employers, and the place of each citizen of our society in the European Union.
So this is what we are doing. We are organizing a number of events. I mean, again, last year, we contributed to more than 400 events. I would like to highlight only one of them, where we had the pleasure to have the chair, Lea Anderson, speaking and the executive vice president. This was the foundation forum where we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary together with the prime minister of Ireland, where is our seat.
So we have absolutely a vast array of possibilities to interact with social partners, with member states, with governments on the topics that are of interest. Third message, cooperation with the others, and I'm very happy that colleagues also mentioned that and Peovy and all of them, and William and Cosmin and Juergen. When you look at the agencies, including this hearing, listening to the colleagues, you might see that sometimes there are issues that overlap. But, actually, they are not, because we have our specialization in different agencies. So, when you think about William mentioned psychosocial risks, and they have it very much in the SNL survey.
We have such questions in the working conditions survey. The result is that we are working on a joint publication now where we put together this different data. Or with Ella, we are preparing the next company survey, which is going to be launched in 2023. With Cinephope, we have an excellent cooperation also with recent publications that happened not far ago. With ETF, also have very good examples of cooperation.
So the differences between the approach, the lenses of the different agencies very much brings a very good picture of the problems that you would like to see. And here, you are going to see some of the examples of the joint cooperation with the agencies. By the way, there was a picture of all of us together with the director general, which was very recent. We started a project, which is one of these good examples, I believe, to create a joint database where you could see the data of the different agencies, and it's going to fit the skills observatory and the fair transition observatory, where we try to create really these synergies. Whatever additional information you need, we are absolutely at your disposal, and thank you very much for your attention.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. We then move on to the questions and comments. And I have Missus Mendia, first on the list, please. Thank you, sir. I will speak in Spanish.
Well,
Idoia Mendia
As you said, there are a number of policies which are not necessarily very sexy. I believe that was the term that you used. But some are less interesting than others. That is true. But I want to focus on a question that has come up for a number of the agencies that have been presenting here today when talking about the plans for this year, and that is the topic of care.
We have a demographic change and care. And in the specific case of Eurofound, in the first presentation, you mentioned this link between the study that was carried out on demographic change and the care economy. And then there's the topic of work conditions as well for that market segment, and also the quality of work. And this is something that we certainly need to deal with because of the demographic change. But this is a very, it's a very precarious form of work, very female led.
Many people are working on an undeclared basis, and that's why people from the agency have been working on this issue and have also been looking at it from the health and safety in the workplace angle as well. And then there's also the equality side of this issue as well, because as I've said, this is a very female dominated sector. It gets a lot of bad press. And we really need to make sure that we have enough people working within that sector. Not many people want to.
So there is a link there to migrant workers as well. So I would like to know what plans Eurofound has for covering this, and also in conjunction with your colleagues from other agencies? Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much. Are there other questions at this point? If not, I will give the floor back to Mr. Kaufman.
Ivailo Kalfin
Thank you very much, and thank you very much for the question. What we are doing, actually, what you can find in our research, is looking beyond the average numbers. Because average numbers, I mean, in general, everything is going very well in Europe. Positive development of the job quality of different areas. But then when we look a bit deeper, we see that there are some sectors or work groups or professionals that are creating kites kind of pockets, which where the distance between the average is increasing.
And care sector is one of these, certainly one of these pockets. First, this is probably the sector where you have most of the undeclared work. I mean, very often in the semi families, have care services. I mean, people are not paid. They don't have contracts.
They don't declare that at all. At the same time, it has an impact on the labor market, because, you have, if we are speaking about the slack about the possibilities to activate more people on the labor market, certainly care for, especially for children, for elderly people, for people with disability comes in the first place. So if we have some better public services, and, again, you can see what happens in the rural areas or in the urban areas, a huge difference. You can find the explanation easily where the problem is and where eventually, if there are some better public policies, you could activate more people. Not that everybody is going to leave their children to someone else.
Of course, there will be people that would prefer to stay at home, but still many of them are staying because there is no access to the public services. Or when we speak about the different types of contracts, I mean, again, this, yes, there are many migrant workers probably without contracts, but as a whole, not only the migrant workers, but also the European workers or even domestic in the country, they're working without contracts. So it's very difficult to assess their working conditions in terms of pay, leaves, medical assurance, pension, Social Security, etcetera, etcetera. Etc. So that's another problem.
And, these issues have to be brought to light. So the thing is that we don't discuss them, doesn't make them disappear. And this is what we are trying to say. Okay. This is the situation.
Let's see the full picture of the situation. How many people are staying at home in an active age because there is no access to the public services? How many people are working without a contract? What are their working conditions, and what is happening with that? What is the difference between taking care about elderly people or people with disabilities and children, and where eventually the state, the government could help?
What is the role of the regional governments? Is it possible? In some countries, it exists, but in some country, representation doesn't exist at all. These people are not represented. They don't have a say.
Again, we have good examples, and we have very bad examples. So all these are questions that you could see in the research there, and then it's up to the policymakers really to try to see what are the possible solutions. Certainly, not everything can be changed very easily. But with the demographic shift of Europe with an aging population, we started talking about longer working life. We started talking about adaptation of the working conditions, but we have to really take seriously the care because, otherwise, the overall quality of life of the Europeans and what they can afford or cannot afford is going to deteriorate very much.
So, indeed, I mean, it's very good to go beyond the average figures and to look at the different particularities, regional, gender, different social groups, and that's going to give lots of food for decision making.
Li Andersson
Alright. Thank you very much. I have no further requests for the floor, which means that we have reached the end of this session. I really want to thank, of course, all the directors, the EPA-appointed experts, and all of the members for your active participation. It was once again very interesting.
So we will continue our good cooperation, and we will also now end the committee meeting for today. We are continuing tomorrow at 09:15 with votes. So, see you then, and thank you all.
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