Agenda for new skills and jobs
ECOS-V/011
Agenda for new skills and jobs
THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
- strongly encourages all Member States to set quantitative national targets for all of the Europe 2020 headline targets, in particular those directly related to the New Skills and Jobs Agenda, in order to give greater ownership of the National Reform Programmes, demonstrate political ambition for the policies being pursued and to allow for a transparent assessment of policy effectiveness;
- advocates an approach to skills and jobs that: (a) empowers local/regional partners to design interventions and direct resources to meet local/regional employer needs and focus on identified target groups in the labour force; and (b) establishes a framework for joining up services at the point of delivery and devising tailored solutions to tackle specific local/regional problems;
- recalls Article 174 (TFEU) on Territorial Cohesion and underlines the need to take regional differentiation fully into account, as significant disparities exist across the European Union and the challenges that regions face in meeting the Europe 2020 targets vary considerably. These challenging circumstances have been clearly set out in the Fifth Report on Economic, Social and Territorial Cohesion (please see point 6 on pages 3-4);
- calls for greater consideration to be given to the timing of the phasing out of the current crisis-related labour market measures and the implications of this on market confidence, the public finances, individual employment prospects of vulnerable workers and overall levels of long term unemployment; considers that the early success or otherwise of the Agenda for New Skills and Jobs will depend on the effectiveness and lasting impact of the crisis measures in assisting the labour market through the economic crisis. Nonetheless, the basic principle must be for the crisis measures to be phased out quickly.
- strongly encourages all Member States to set quantitative national targets for all of the Europe 2020 headline targets, in particular those directly related to the New Skills and Jobs Agenda, in order to give greater ownership of the National Reform Programmes, demonstrate political ambition for the policies being pursued and to allow for a transparent assessment of policy effectiveness;
- advocates an approach to skills and jobs that: (a) empowers local/regional partners to design interventions and direct resources to meet local/regional employer needs and focus on identified target groups in the labour force; and (b) establishes a framework for joining up services at the point of delivery and devising tailored solutions to tackle specific local/regional problems;
- recalls Article 174 (TFEU) on Territorial Cohesion and underlines the need to take regional differentiation fully into account, as significant disparities exist across the European Union and the challenges that regions face in meeting the Europe 2020 targets vary considerably. These challenging circumstances have been clearly set out in the Fifth Report on Economic, Social and Territorial Cohesion (please see point 6 on pages 3-4);
- calls for greater consideration to be given to the timing of the phasing out of the current crisis-related labour market measures and the implications of this on market confidence, the public finances, individual employment prospects of vulnerable workers and overall levels of long term unemployment; considers that the early success or otherwise of the Agenda for New Skills and Jobs will depend on the effectiveness and lasting impact of the crisis measures in assisting the labour market through the economic crisis. Nonetheless, the basic principle must be for the crisis measures to be phased out quickly.
