Brussels, 25/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - The need for 800,000 additional researchers and scientists can only be a cause for astonishment given that the EU has such high unemployment rates. The EU, therefore, has to deal with this “strangest” of situations, providing, among other things, support for specialised training, Lithuania's Minister for Education and Science Dainius Pavalkis noted at the end of the informal Competitiveness Council in Vilnius on Wednesday 24 July.
The second day of the Council therefore focused exclusively on the issue of research, and the difficulty posed by the lack of qualified workers in the science and innovation sector. Although, overall, there are currently 2 million jobs vacant in the EU, according to the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of Ministers, up to 800,000 scientists and researchers are needed - especially biologists, pharmacologists, doctors, nurses and engineers. Nevertheless, it is not through the lack of a good salary package that these jobs have not been filled. As a recent Eurofund report on employment polarisation and job quality in the crisis pointed out, “three out of the top six categories of top-paid jobs demonstrating growth were science/engineering professions in hi-tech or heavy manufacturing sectors”, especially in Germany.
The challenge for the EU is both employment and innovation and, in turn, competitiveness. For this reason, European Commissioner for Research and Innovation Maire Geoghegan Quinn, who attended the Vilnius meeting, stressed that this difficulty of adjusting supply and demand on the science labour market is “one of the key areas of European policy, where we have a lot of work to do”. This work should translate into three priority action areas, using European instruments, “to close the existing gap between the two separate worlds of education and the labour market”, according to Pavalkis. “We need to do three things - to match skills supply and demand, to get research and business around the same table, and to make full use of the science and innovation potential.”
This problem is common to the majority of countries in the EU. Those who currently enrol for higher education still tend to choose areas where unemployment is high, said Marijk van der Wende from the University of Amsterdam, during a session with the EU ministers, a Presidency press release states. In Pavalkis' view, it is therefore becoming necessary for the EU to re-think “how education and training systems can deliver the skills needed by the labour market. We need to get young people to study STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] subjects, as well as more actively choose research careers”. (JK/transl.fl)