Regional conference on the trends and challenges of labour markets and employability of human capital in the six Eastern countries

The EU Commission DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities and the European Training Foundation organise conference "Regional conference on the trends and challenges of labour markets and employability of human capital in the six Eastern countries", in which representatives of the different ministries and social partners from the six Eastern Partnership countries took part, as well as representatives of the ITUC-PERC, IOE, ILO, OSCE, EU Commission, World Bank and experts from New member states of the EU.

At the conference the EU Agenda "New Skills and Jobs" was presented to the participants and its relevance to the EP countries was debated, as well as the key findings of the recent ETF regional labour market review.

During thematic workshops the participants exchanged views on the state of affairs re. VET systems in the countries, presented the national professional education systems, current trends and challenges for the labour markets.

The ITUC-PERC contributed to the "international panel disussion" on the Eastern Partnership policies and the place of the VET in it, calling for a strong institutional framework based on social dialog principles in EP polices - national and regional - particularly on the issues related to the labour market matching, decent work promotion and transition from school to work.

Both PERC and IOE representative expressed deep frustration with the present arrangement of the EP Civil Society Forum and with the lack of understanding of the social dialog by its actors.

/PERC