In a report published on Tuesday 27 February, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has called on the European Commission to improve the quality of worker mobility information, including the various forms of discrimination.
George Pufan, the ECA member who led the audit, says that the instruments put in place to encourage worker mobility can clearly be improved, for example with regard to the traceability and monitoring of European Union funding.
The audit was carried out at the European Commission and in five member states (Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania and United Kingdom) and delivers a worrying picture: the quality of the data on the mismatch of skills and labour market needs varies widely from one member state to another (Germany and the UK perform well here), hampering the proper functioning of the internal market and worker mobility. The needs for skills in one geographical area remain unknown elsewhere in Europe because of a lack of standardisation of information and failure to share this information, an ECA member said.
The audit states that the European Commission does not know what amounts of the €27.5 billion allocated from the European Social Fund for worker mobility are used for this purpose. Similarly, the EURES portal, the European network of labour market organisations which aims at facilitating the free movement of workers within the EU, presents serious shortcomings: national public job search services do not publish all job opportunities available and the information provided to job seekers is often incomplete. The great majority of cross-border projects that fall within the EURES network ambit have no performance targets set beforehand and, similarly, the level of monitoring of projects is insufficient. In their report, the auditors regret that most public employment services are unable to provide figures on the job placements made through the EURES programme.
A raft of recommendations is provided by the ECA for the Commission. Firstly, the Commission should measure awareness amongst EU citizens of existing tools relating to information provision on the freedom of movement of workers and reporting discrimination. The auditors call on the Commission to work with the member states to improve data gathering on worker mobility and labour market imbalances, and to better target European Union funding for worker mobility and improve monitoring.
The ECA suggests that the member states ensure that the EURES programme is more effective and make the most of this dedicated portal.
The report could, an ECA member opines, provide guidance for the European Commission, which is about to present an initiative on 13 March (see EUROPE 11964) that would set up a European labour authority.
The ECA report may be consulted at: http://bit.ly/2CnBpAU (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)