Essay: Developments in European law and policy

EUROPEAN TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION
Over the past few months there happened again a lot of interesting news in the policy area: The European working time directive, labour law. Briefly, I would like to mention the most important business that happened over the last few months.
European Commission
On 26.02.2015, the Commission has committed 3.8 billion euros to fight poverty and help the most vulnerable in Europe.
The FEAD (Fund for European Aid to the most Deprived) gives Member States valuable support in their efforts to help Europe’s most vulnerable people, those who have been worst affected by the on-going economic and social crisis, by providing non-financial assistance.
Why help?
The fund wants help to strengthen social cohesion and contribute to the meeting the EUROPE 2002 target (of reducing the number of people in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion by at least 20 million by 2020).
How will the feed be used in the Member States?
Italy gets the biggest amount of money with 670 million euros. After that Spain with 563,4 million euros. The UK, the Netherlands, Cyprus and Denmark get the least with 3,9 million euros. The Member States had the flexibility to choose the type of assistance they wish to provide and their preferred model for procuring and distributing the food and goods, according to their culture.
‘The FEAD is there to help strengthen social cohesion and contribute to meeting the EUROPE 2020.’ ‘ Rehan Qureshi.’
JUNKER COMMISSION
The European Commission proposed on 04.02.2015 to make 1 billion euro from the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) available. This way, the Member States will be able to boost youth employment and helping them get into work faster.
The main priorities of this Commission are to strengthen Europe’s competiteveniss, stimulate investment and create jobs. All Member States have committed to the ‘Youth Guarantee’, to provide young people under the age of 25 with a quility job offer, an apprenticeship or traning.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
The European Commission is busy tackling long-term unemployment ‘ this will run until 15 May 2015.
The aim is to contribute to an impact assessment preparing a proposal for a Council Recommendation on the integration in the labour market of the long-term unemployed.
Despite that Europe is slowly recovering from the crisis, long-term unemployment continues to increase.
EMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
There are a few key factors behind resilience to the crisis. One of the main findings of the 2014 Employment and Social Developments in Europe review is that countries providing high quality jobs and effective social protection and investing in human capital have proved to be more resilient to the economic crisis.
There is need to invest in the formation and maintenance of the right skills of the workforce to support productivity and restoring convergence among Member States. The review notes that several Member States are progressively moving towards a social investment model. There is confermation that there is need to continue with labour market reforms and the modernisation of social protection.
Essential is investment in human capital. The review underlines that effective human capital investment requires not only education and training in the right skills, but also adequate framework. And this needs to be matched by an increase in the supply of quality jobs. The review also underlines