Workshop A - Session 1

Title: Employability and Competitiveness - European and National Perspectives Chair: Lindsay Jackson, European Training Federation, Italy Lindsay Jackson, European Training Federation, Italy

The European Training Foundation in Turin, Italy is an agency of the European Union and our mission is to support the reform of vocational education in training in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Employment and competitiveness are extremely important for the countries that I now work with. The issues of societal change that we are facing in the EU are nothing compared to the societal changes that are under way now and have been for the last decade or so in the partner countries. The globalisation of economies that we are facing, the shift that we are facing is nothing compared to the shift from command economy that they are facing in those countries now.

The question of competition, speaking generally, was unheard of in those countries and therefore the race to accept the challenge of being competitive is much greater in those countries than in ours. In information technology the challenge that they face is much greater than the one that we face. The sheer lack of equipment on which to train young people is something that we have no conception of in our countries, even though we also complain about the lack of material equipment. There is, however, an absolute enthusiasm to learn, regardless of the initial level of educational attainment.

We talk about jobs for life. There really were jobs for life in those countries. The training that you received initially, for the job that you went into initially, was your training and you stayed in that job for life. Many of the people in the partner countries look back on that period of time, where there was a job for life, with a certain nostalgia. Who can blame them? Whereas we have some element of safety net, in many of the countries we deal with there is none.

In many countries the continuing education system does not exist. There are no training centres. There is nowhere to go for help in many cases, when you are unemployed. I am painting a black picture here deliberately, and I know that many of my colleagues from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will recognise that, but I really wanted to paint an extra black picture just to emphasise to you the scope and the scale of the extra problems that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are facing.

Labour Market

We talk about a flexible labour market and we say that, within the European Union, this is something we have to get used to, this is something we have embraced, and so on. It is absolutely new for these countries. A labour market is something that did not exist in that sense for them in the past.

We moan about limited financial support for training and limited political priority for education and training and again the situation is even more enhanced for those countries.

The issue of competitiveness, which is the second plank to the employment and competitiveness heading that we have before us here today, is also enhanced for these countries because of one of the criteria for accession to the European Union.

At the moment, 10 of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have set themselves, as a goal, achieving membership of the European Union. There are three broad criteria and one of them is to have a functioning labour market, and to have an economy which can withstand the competitive pressures of membership of the European Union.

The picture I have painted is rather black and maybe things are rather greyer than that in reality; but maybe you can understand the challenge those countries face, to be able to withstand the competition that they will face when their markets are open with ours. At the moment there is trade and increasing trade with the European Union from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and a great proportion of the products that they export and the services they export come to the European Union. But there is not an open market yet and, when there is, for those countries to be able to withstand the competition they will face is one mighty challenge, and one that the education and training system needs to rise and meet. It is one that, at the moment and in my personal opinion based on my work, they are not ready for, and that is quite scary. It is quite scary for them and it is very scary as well, or it ought to be scary, for us in the European Union.

If they cannot withstand the competitive pressures then that will place pressure on all of the other member states when those countries join, pressures on structural fund monies, pressures on all kinds of policies. The ideal of promoting lifelong learning, and a shift of emphasis from the 6 year old to the 22 year old, is crucial for all of us. It is particularly crucial for these countries where, with the demise of state-run companies, continuing training has ceased to exist.

In the partner countries the notion of core skills - computer literacy, communication skills, personal skills, numeracy, literacy and so on - is relatively new and it is something that they are grappling with at the moment. A particular project of the European Training Foundation is to help with the thinking on the introduction of core skills into curricula in general in the partner countries. We need to reduce barriers to mobility of labour by increasingly making qualifications transparent by accreditation of informal and prior and unrecognised learning.

Entrepreneurial skills

Of particular importance in the partner countries is promoting entrepreneurial skills. Again this is completely new. It was not a required thing to be entrepreneurial in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the past and it now is. That is a top priority for many of the countries.

To establish training as a component of active labour market policies is something that we are very familiar with and something that the partner countries are not.

To develop incentives for training is my next point, to increase opportunities for particular target groups. Again it is very important for the partner countries as it is for us, and, as a woman, one of the things that I have noticed in my work with the partner countries, with some satisfaction actually, is that women do not face, in general, the same discrimination (this is too strong a word, but I cannot think of another one) on their entry to the labour market. There is not the big difference between male and female employment in those countries that there is in our own.

The last point I would make is to attempt to promote the involvement of employers. The latest figure is that only 5% of small firms are actually involved in the Investors in People Initiative, which is worrying at an EU level and it is even more worrying if you project that feeling on to the new small firms in the partner countries. They see absolutely no need in general for training. We could say that of our own companies within the European Union, and you could definitely say it on behalf of the countries of the partner states, where, with such high levels of unemployment, the labour market is there for them to pick and choose from, they see absolutely no need for providing training of their own. That is a major barrier that we have to overcome. That would be my final point, that we could take some action on.

I think I have said enough. I hope that I have given you a very little and very generalised picture of the extra challenges that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe face. I would suggest that actually they are not different challenges, they are just bigger.

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