Commissioner Thyssen welcomes provisional agreement on revamped EURES job search network - Main contents

"I welcome the agreement on the EURES regulation reached today by Employment and Social Policy Ministers during the EPSCO Council. It is important to improve the pan-EU job search network and facilitate national and cross border labour mobility.

This agreement aims at the expansion of the scope of EURES. Member States will have to enable private organisations involved in job matching to also become members of the EURES network, subject to certain conditions. And all vacancies that are published by a Public Employment Service in a Member State must be published EU-wide on EURES. Only very specific exceptions will be accepted.

We also agreed on more efficiency in the matching of job offers and CV's. The EURES portal should become a smarter system, enabling to match automatically the right CV's with the right job offers.

Finally, the EURES members will be obliged to provide support services, to both job seekers and employers. This could vary from for instance providing general information on living and working conditions in the country of destination, to assistance with the drawing up of CV's and job vacancies to ensure technical conformity with the EURES portal.

What we want to establish is a true European placement and recruitment tool, supporting a better integrated and better functioning European labour market in order to achieve higher growth and more jobs. Our proposal aims to ensure that the EURES portal should become the natural first choice for any European citizen interested in, or considering working in another European country.

The European Parliament will now examining the proposal and I look forward to hearing their position. I will firmly support the incoming Latvian Presidency and the European Parliament in finding an agreement in first reading as I believe this file deserves priority in light of the agenda on growth and jobs that we have set at the beginning of this new start for Europe."

STATEMENT/14/2581

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