Valeria Ronzitti, the Secretary General for the European Centre of Employers and Enterprises providing Public Services (CEEP), has submitted a number of proposals to more efficiently integrate refugees and migrants from third countries onto the labour market. This submission was made during the European dialogue on skills and migration on Tuesday 23 May.
Ms Ronzitti provided a clear diagnosis to her audience. Members of her organisation are having to confront four major difficulties when helping integrate refugees and migrants: - the prohibitive prices of housing on local (often stretched) markets; the lack of language skills of the staff in host countries to help train refugees and migrants; the lack of skilled employees within local level social services when receiving refugees in appropriate conditions, especially when supporting them during asylum procedures and the existing deficit in support services, particularly for unaccompanied children.
There are many solutions to these problems and efficiency appears to be the watchword in the argument being put forward by the secretary-general. Ms Ronzitti therefore wants to promote the implementation of operational frameworks integrating several actors in an effort to more efficiently support asylum seekers and refugees. She therefore highlighted the need to develop a more efficient assessment of the skills of those first arriving, in an effort to guarantee the matching of skills with labour market requirements. She considers it is necessary to upgrade skills by emphasising language training, vocational education and training, as well as entrepreneurial training. Finally, Ms Ronzitti believes it is necessary to look at innovative measures, such as the Swedish Fast-Track initiative introduced by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities (SALAR).
This initiative brings together actors from the private sector, as well as local and regional representatives. It seeks to reduce the period of time between when migrants arrive and when they can access a first job. This is done by taking their skills more effectively into account and targeting market requirements and sectors where there are labour shortages.
The Commission also presented its “Employers Together for Integration” initiative to help improve good practices in the private sector and facilitate the integration of refugees and migrants onto the labour market (see other article). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)