1. Making it happen: the European Semester 2015 More streamlined recommendations May 13th Package
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2. Structure of the May 13, 2015 package
1 Chapeau communication
26 CSR for 26 MS + for Euro area
In February 2015, the Commission also published 27 (+ one Euro Area) Country Reports, of which:
16 In-depth Reviews (IDR) of MIP (BE, BG, DE, IE, ES, FR, HR, IT, HU, NL, SI, FI, PT, SE, RO and UK).
Background material updated: thematic fiches – May 2015
The Alert Mechanism Report and the Joint Employment Report were published in November 2014 – together with the AGS
Updated

3. The streamlining of the European Semester aims at:
increasing political ownership and accountability
improving the CSRs implementation.
accelerating on the structural reform path
Attention to employment and social issues strongly maintained
More attention for product and service market reform:
a return to growth cannot come from a strong focus on labour market reform.
different reforms must go hand-in-hand.
Despite a substantial overall decrease in the number of CSRs, the cut has been lower in relative terms for employment and social issues

4. The new approach: clearer priorities, fewer recommendations
The slide shows that the prioritisation on which the college agreed has been decisively translated into a really different approach, with a few stronger prioritisation on the most important issues.
This implies some difficult choices. And it implies that for the coming year a greater pressure is on the college to ensure that MS deliver on the fewer recommendations that are proposed.
This in turn implies that the Commission needs to be stronger vis-à-vis Member States in pushing for concrete and immediate action.
Despite a substantial overall decrease in the number of CSRs, the cut has been lower in relative terms for employment and social issues

5. Country Specific Recommendations

6. 1. Education and training
Crisis and technology impacts…. ….job growth shows that skills matter…
LM relevance of education / skill mismatch: BE, EE, FI, IT, LT, UK
VET, apprentice-ships, work-based learning: EE, LV, IT, UK
Cooperation education with private sector: UK
Early school leaving: MT, RO
Higher education reform: CZ, LV
The crisis has strengthened a development which started some time ago.
Job growth favours higher skills levels, and notably middle levels face a hard time.
This development further supports our view that skills are vital for Europe's competitiveness, favouring high value added production and services.
A few key words I want to mention in this respect:
Apprenticeships and work based learning should remain a focal point in our work
Enterpreneurship training is vital as especially new businesses create jobs tomorrow

7. 2. Youth unemployment
Youth unemployment down by over a year but still very high
The Youth Guarantee:
EU makes a difference
Considerable progress
2015 CSRs
Need for structural
approach in:
BG, ES, FI, IT, PT, RO
Source:Eurostat
Despite the good news still more than 23 million Europeans are unemployed today.
More than 11 million European citizens are unemployed for more than a year. And a majority of those are unemployed for over 2 years.
And for the near future, we must face the fact that unemployment remains high.
High Long Term unemployment is now the main risk. Entrenched –structural- unemployment reduces our future capacity to grow. In a time of demographic decline this is dangerous.
The more entrenched, the harder it is to get people back into the labour market.
Statistics show clearly that it also leads other costs to society, for example higher healthcare expenditure, higher criminality rates, lower educational attainment amongst the children of long term unemployed persons, and so forth.
This cost to society, and to the individuals concerned, is something we must address.
Improving employability of long-term unemployed is explicitly mentioned in CSRs in few countries (FI, RO, SI, SK).
However, what really matters is stepping up measures in different areas which in combination improve our performance on this issue. More concretely, the Commission recommends:
Promoting wage setting systems (including minimum wage) which support job creation
Reducing the tax burden on low-income workers
Tackling labour market segmentation between different types of contracts;
Enhancing active labour market policies and improving the performance of public employment services
Well-functioning PES and the availability of a wide range of ALPMs is important for all Member States, but this year the Commission has identified only countries where real barriers exist.
Some countries need to broaden the provision or strengthen ALMPs (RO, SK, IT), in other cases the quality and/or effectiveness need improving (ES, PT). In HU the dominance of the public works scheme should be reduced (given the poor labour market effects of such programmes) to the benefit of other ALMPs.

8. 3. Poverty and exclusion on the rise in two third of the MS
At-risk-of poverty and social exclusion
Effectiveness of social transfers:
ES, HR
Adequacy/ coverage of unemployment benefits/ social assistance, link to activation:
FR, HU, IE, HR, LT, LV, RO
Childhood poverty: IE
Disabled: EE
Unlike employment and unemployment developments, where divergences among MS have started to reduce, divergences in poverty trends have continued to increase due to continued negative developments in the euro-area countries most severely hit by the crisis, which have continued to see their poverty and severe material deprivation rates increase steeply.
Rising poverty mainly affects the working age population and their children, as they were those most affected by job losses.
Mitigating rising inequalities requires training and quality jobs for all (to limit the rise in labour market polarisation and segmentation) and improving the effectiveness of social policies (to reach those who are most in need).

9. 4. Extending working lifes
Duration of working life (years, 2012) and employment rate of older workers (%, 2013)
2015 CSRs target mainly on:
Restricting access to early retirement DE, FI, HR, LU
Adjust statutory retirement age to life expectancy: AT, BE, LU, MT
Actively enhance older workers' employability AT, BG, FI, SI
Harmonisation of retirement age men and women: AT, RO
Sustainability/adequacy pension system: AT, PT, SI, LT, FR, HR
Source: Eurostat

10. 5. ALMP and employment services
2015 CSRs target mainly:
Enhance quality, coverage, targeting and effectiveness of ALMP: BE, HU, IT, PT, RO, SK
PES performance: ES, IT, PT, RO
Improve employability: EE, FI, LT, LV, SI
Long-term unemployment (%, left scale, 2012) and activation support (LMP participants per 100 persons wanting to work, right scale, 2011)
Source: Eurostat, LMP database

11. 6. Wages and competitiveness
2015 CSRs target mainly:
Wage setting, development, indexation and flexibility: BE, ES, FI, FR, HR, IT, LU, PT
Minimum wages, incl. not detrimental to job creation: BG, FR, PT, RO, SI
Unit labour costs in deficit and surplus countries, euro-area groups weighted averages, y-o-y % change
There are specific cost competitiveness concerns for particular countries, because wages have gradually moved out of line with productivity (for example BE, LU, FI).
In some cases this calls for revising the wage setting system (FR, HR, LU) or allowing for wage bargaining at sectorial and/or firm level (ES, IT, PT).
For 5 Member States there are recommendations on minimum wages, either stressing
- the importance of transparent guidelines for setting the minimum wage in order to avoid strong ad hoc minimum wage increases (BG, RO; SI review of the minimum wage setting mechanism), or
- to make sure that minimum wage developments are in line with the objectives of both employment and competitiveness (FR, PT).
*Surplus countries are: BE, DE, LU, NL, AT, FI
Source: Eurostat

12. Thank You!