German Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen said she’ll push to create a Europe-wide labor market with common training, mutually recognized qualifications and language classes that allow people to move to where the work is.
Von der Leyen, who is coordinating a jobs summit with labor ministers from all 27 European Union member states in Berlin on July 3, said that better mobility is key to helping match people in countries like Portugal burdened with youth unemployment of 42.5 percent with jobs in Germany, where 34,000 training places are vacant.
“I think in terms of a European labor market and no longer national labor markets,” Von der Leyen, 54, said in an interview in Berlin yesterday. “A young Spaniard has to know where there’s a training place vacant in Germany or Austria.”
European leaders meeting in Brussels today are shifting their focus from three years of crisis fighting to longer-term efforts to tackle unemployment that has reached a record 12.2 percent in the 17-nation euro region. By contrast, joblessness in Germany fell in June to a two-decade low of 6.8 percent, figures released yesterday showed.
EU leaders seeking to address unemployment among under-25s that has surpassed 50 percent in Spain and Greece plan to “front-load” 6 billion euros ($7.8 billion) in aid already made available, Von der Leyen said. To that can be added 16 billion euros from European structural funds, yielding a total of 22 billion euros, she said.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor
via Germany’s Von der Leyen Urges European Labor Market to Spur Jobs – Bloomberg.
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