SEE Economists network meeting: “European policy of flexicurity, empirical analysis, and reform proposals”

The second meeting of the SEE TU Economists Network was held in Sarajevo, April 8 -9, 2010, attended by representatives from Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
The meeting was jointly organized by “Friedrich Ebert Stiftung” Belgrade and Sarajevo, and the ITUC/ PERC SEE Office with the support of the LO-TCO.

The main topic of the meeting was the European policy of flexicurity, empirical analysis, and reform proposals. The purpose of the meeting was to point out to the key challenges coming out of the policy of flexicurity, consequences on flexible employment, change of political philosophy, instruments, exchanging standpoints and approaches of the trade unions on flexicurity, and to discuss strategic options to overcome the situation and to achieve a sustainable social development.

Following the introduction by Milan Jevtić from the Fridrich Ebert Foundation- Belgrade Office and Enisa Salimović from ITUC/PERC SEE Office, Prof. Dr. Andranik Tangian, expert from the Hans-Böckler-Foundation, Düsseldorf and University of Karlsruhe gave a presentation on Concept of flexicurity: history, OECD and European Employment Strategy, recent documents of the European Commission, role of social partners; Indicators of monitoring flexicurity from seven viewpoints: (1) neo-liberal, (2) trade-unionist, (3) of the European welfare state, (4) regarding precarious work, (5) regarding professional training and lifelong learning, ends in collective agreements, and (7) regarding the current crisis; Political implications: Need for reconsidering the flexicurity policy in the Agenda 2020. The meeting participants actively commented and discussed the issue of flexicurity and impact of introduction of that strange terminology in SEE countries.

Prof. Bruno Sergi from the Messina University gave a short overview on Lessons from the last meeting: how experts should behave in order to get their voice to be heard, what should be the role of economic experts on national level, what is the aim of cooperation between national economic experts of trade unions in the region, the role of media and how to involve them in the TU everyday work in order to achive our goals.

This was followed by the national presentation on Croatia in fight against corruption , what does it mean for EU accession and what does it mean in sense of investments. Serbian delegation presented “Economic Reforms in Serbia and impact of global economic crisis”.

The other delegations presented problems on national level in getting appropriate data; problems inside trade unions that experts are facing concerning the common work of economic experts in SEE countries; where to get data for experts’ work; how to do the work with missing data; proposals: what could they learn from each other.

Conclusions:

The SEE TU Economic Experts proposed the following:

1) Internet forum, to enhance ideas, work out reports etc. Plus, the Network members should append their CV, photos etc. which would help to give the network visibility with media etc. in the region and beyond;

2) A sort of spokesperson who should contact media to let all know about the SEE TU Economic Experts activities;

3) The beginning of talks to provide recommendations on:
a. Anticorruption Regional agency
b. Researching Regional agency (which could refer to universities)
c. A working group on how taking concrete actions against poverty and unemployment
d. A working group on tax harmonization (too big is tax competition in SEE)

Mr. Zoran Ristić- economic expert from Serbia will collect additional ideas and proposals which the economic experts need to send to him until middle of May. The Network members will select the issues to be presented to the SEE TU Forum and some of them should be included in the Agenda to be discussed during the next Regional Cooperation Council Meeting.

/Enisa Salimović,
ITUC/PERC SEE Offce Sarajevo

Presentation Tangian flexicurity
NHS Corruption
Presentation Serbia