(23 June 2015) – The European Parliament’s employment committee votes today on proposals to improve the EURES network as well as to further integrate Europe’s labour markets and facilitate workers’ access to mobility services.
Although some parts of Europe suffer from high unemployment rates and employers in other parts struggle to fill vacancies, relatively few people decide to look for a job in another EU country.
Language barriers and the difficulty of finding a job abroad means relatively few people in Europe move to another member state for work. Every year only 0.29% of people do so in the EU (excluding Croatia), while in Australia 1.5% move between the eight states for a job and in the US 2.4% of workers cross state lines for employment, according to an OECD study published in March 2012. In total only 7.5 million out of 241 million European workers – about 3.1% – has a job in another EU country.
New legislation aims to make it easier to find work abroad by improving the EURES network, creating the largest possible pool of job vacancies and CVs in the EU and making it easier to match them. The plans also cover apprenticeships and traineeships and set out to facilitate the exchange of information between EU countries on labour shortages and surpluses.