Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

Chapter IFinal Report- Putting employment creation and productivity increase at the centre of all economic andindustrial policies, promoting labour intensive activities and investments, but also high addedvalue industries.- Integration and coordination of public policies in four areas is required to render effective thenational strategies to enhance creation of good quality: macroeconomic and fiscal policies,public investment and private sector promotion policies; education and training policies; socialprotection policies; and labour regulation policies. This coordination should take on aninstitutional shape, i.e. formal exchange and consultation between the respective competentMinistries at the national level.- Extensive employment policy assessments should be carried out in every country to begin with,and monitoring and evaluation capacities be substantially strengthened. The working and impactof active labour market policies should be systematically assessed, and policies redesigned toachieve employment creation objectives.- In-depth study on the obstacles to the labour market participation of women and theformulation of an strategy to remove these obstacles (such as public transportation and childcaring facilities, for instance).- Creating incentives to private sector firms to hire new graduates and women and also trainingfor workers through tax rebates.- Creating a set of incentives for transforming informal employment into formal employment(this could include a reduction of current high social security contributions).- Establishment of social protection systems guaranteeing universal coverage, includingunemployment insurance schemes. Emphasis should be put on the protection of workers ratherthan the protection of jobs (see Jaidi 2009, National Background Paper, Section 4.4).7.4. EU Migration PoliciesAs AMCs need to undertake structural reforms to upgrade their economic policies in order tocreate an encouraging investment and business climate to attract foreign direct investment andto foster the private sector (i.e., to attract and stimulate the production resources they lack,capital and entrepreneurship). The EU then should upgrade the mix of policies increasing itscompetitiveness to attract the main production factor it will need in the coming decades –labour, and in particular skilled labour. A genuine structural reform of EU migration policies– both at the national and at the EU level – needs to be undertaken to that end. A multilevelstrategy to address this policy reform should include the following measures:- Provision for legal schemes allowing for permanent legal migration to the EU, and notonly for skilled migrants. This might provide the basis for a more efficient cooperationstrategy in migration matters between the EU and the AMCs. For a number of reasons(analyzed in Section 6.3.3), the recently approved Blue Card does not fulfil theserequirements.- In the framework of emerging EU migration policy, design and implementation ofEU-wide schemes allowing for circular and temporary migration from AMCs. Thiscould build upon current bilateral agreements in this field (see Section 4.2) and lead totrue mobility partnerships. But it could also be implemented through liberalization ofservice provision through the temporary movement of labour (Mode 4 of the GeneralAgreement on Trade on Services) agreed within the framework of on-going99