On December 8, the Lasaire think tank organised a seminar at the European Economic and Social Committee titled Anticipation and participatory change management in companies during a period of crisis and technological change. This seminar took place in the framework of their 12th Biennial project “Europe, Work, Employment". The aim of this project, as stated on Lasaire's website, is '' to promote innovative actions for employee involvement to help their representatives anticipate changes in companies, promote the social dialogue and transnational cooperation against the background of restructuring operations and changes such as mergers, acquisitions, and relocations, and the effects of outsourcing on companies and groups of companies operating at the EU scale''.
The EESC President Georges Dassis addressed the participants in an opening speech. After thanking the Lasaire members for their excellent work, he underlined the importance of job creation, especially in this time of acute economic crisis. "More than 23 millions of people are officially unemployed and in order to create more jobs, we have to invest. The Juncker plan is an excellent initiative but unfortunately, it is not enough", Mr Dassis said.
As a concluding remark, he stressed that young people's access to the labour market needs to be ensured by concrete actions and not just statements, because of its direct link to people's quality of life, of which further deterioration is unacceptable.