Ministers and representatives of Ministers for Employment and Social Affairs from the EU27 will meet in Brussels on Tuesday 16 July for a half-day meeting devoted to the integration of people with disabilities, the fight against labour and skills shortages, and the social dimension of the European Semester of Economic Governance.
As part of the European Semester, the ministers will hold a policy debate on the theme of labour and skills shortages.
The EU Council will also be asked to approve the contribution on employment and social policy aspects of the country-specific recommendations (see EUROPE 13435/1).
Another policy debate will focus on ‘Social inclusion of persons with disabilities at the EU and national level: supporting labour market (re)integration’ on the basis of a discussion paper which raises the challenges of barriers to access to services and the collection of accurate data.
Shortages in the labour market
In a note in preparation for the debate on labour and skills shortages, the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU points out that data shows that around 80% of employers in the EU say they have difficulty recruiting workers with the required skills. What’s more, one in three employees in the EU is not the right person for the job, with 17% overqualified and 13% underqualified.
Shortages “are particularly significant in sectors with poor job quality and are often found in professions which do not typically require tertiary level education. Persistent labour shortages are reflected in a high job vacancy rate in the EU, which reached a record level of 3% in the second quarter of 2022, before falling back to 2.6% in the first quarter of 2024”, adds the document.
Ministers will be asked to identify the main challenges posed by these shortages in their Member State and to explain the measures already put in place.
Mobility within the EU and pension systems
In addition, the ministers and ministerial representatives will discuss a non-paper entitled ‘Ensuring rapid pension protection for persons who have exercised their freedom of movement within the EU’, submitted by the Czech Republic and supported by Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia.
Seen by Agence Europe, this document is inspired in particular by Enrico Letta’s recent report on the internal market.
“The mobility of workers in the internal market is closely linked to their social protection. The coordination of social security systems for migrants must work effectively both during the active life of mobile workers and after their active career has ended”, stresses the Czech Republic.
In 2021, 6 million pensions were paid to pensioners living in another country. “Yet, even under the current legal situation under Regulations 883/2004 and 987/2009, hundreds and thousands of new pensioners are still waiting many months for their pensions to be calculated, which are made up of several partial pensions from the Member States where they worked and contributed to their pensions during their working lives. However, it is seniors and pensioners receiving old-age, invalidity or survivors’ pensions who are among the most vulnerable social groups in the EU, as they are usually dependent on pension income in their old age”.
“We, therefore, support Enrico Letta’s call that a key priority on the EU’s political agenda must be to improve the practical functioning of the social security coordination rules, in addition to removing barriers and taking measures to facilitate the movement of workers within the EU”, say the signatories.
They call for a remedy to be found for the delays in processing pension claims, which vary “considerably from one Member State to another” by taking “full advantage of the possibilities offered by the implementation of the Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information (EESSI)”.
They also call on pushing for “the implementation and completion of the necessary organisational and technological changes to enable a rapid response to any request for information related to pension processing, which will then allow for the rapid determination of the amount of the partial pension in each of the countries concerned”.
The European Commission and future EU Council Presidencies will also have to ensure that response times in the area of data exchange between Member States are regularly reported, possibly once a year.
Link to the note on shortages: https://aeur.eu/f/czz
Link to the note on the inclusion of people with disabilities: https://aeur.eu/f/d00 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)