Meeting between Georges Dassis and Rania Antonopoulou

Yesterday EESC president Georges Dassis had a working meeting with Greece's Alternate Minister for Employment, Ms Rania Antonopoulou. The main purpose of the meeting was to inform the EESC president about a proposal of EU Employment Ministers for addressing high unemployment in countries where the jobless rate is above the EU average or where there is long-term unemployment and older workers struggle to enter the labour market.

An agreement in principle has already been reached on the proposal, tabled by Greece, between the employment ministers of Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal and Italy, and the deputy employment minister of Slovenia.

Specifically, the proposal of the six ministers contains the following points:

(a) spending on employment measures to be excluded from the calculation of deficit and debt, and from the Stability Pact;

(b) increase in funding available from the Strategic Investment Fund ("Juncker package");

(c) possibility of seeking additional funding to combat unemployment from non-EU sources.

At their meeting, the Greek Alternate Minister and the EESC president considered in particular the problem of unemployed people over the age of 50 who remain outside the labour market for a long time.

In this connection the minister and the EESC president discussed approaches to analysing the phenomenon, as well as the possibility of enhancing the EESC's expert, consultative input to ensure that the issues of unemployment and jobs are on the agenda of the EU institutions taking decisions in this area.