The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs adopted, at 1st reading of the codecision procedure and subject to amendments, the report by Alexandru ATHANASIU (PES, RO) on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on quarterly statistics on Community job vacancies.
The main amendments adopted in committee are as follows:
- the coverage of agriculture, forestry and fishing activities, as defined by the NACE in force, shall be optional. Member States who wish to provide data for these sectors shall do so in accordance with this Regulation;
- due to the growing importance of personal services (namely, activities delivered to individuals and families in their homes or elsewhere and carried out by government offices or private organisations) for job creation Member States are also requested to transmit job vacancies for such services, if possible.
- the statistics provided shall distinguish, where possible, between vacancies for fixed-term and permanent posts;
- the source of all data provided shall be specified;
- European sample schemes may (and not “shall”) be established and coordinated by the Commission (Eurostat) in order to produce Community estimates where national sample schemes do not meet the Community requirements with regard to quarterly data collection;
- the Commission (Eurostat) shall put in place a suitable framework to carry out a series of feasibility studies undertaken by the Member States who have encountered difficulties in supplying data, including for service activities delivered to individuals and families in their homes or elsewhere and carried out by government offices or by private organisations,
- as soon as possible after the results of the feasibility studies become available, and in dialogue with the Member States and within a reasonable timeframe, the Commission shall adopt measures in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny (comitology);
- further funding may be considered for the implementation work with respect to the measures adopted following the results of the feasibility studies ;
- as soon as possible, but preferably within a year following the publication of the three yearly
report on the implementation of the Regulation, the Member States shall put in place any recommendations set out therein and shall report on the implementation status of previous recommendations ;
- MEPs also inserted a new article concerning the publication of statistical data. The statistics provided by the Member States and an analysis thereof shall be published at regular intervals on the Commission (Eurostat) website. Member States shall also publish the data and shall advertise this fact in order to ensure that as many European citizens as possible have access to it, notably through the EURES portal. Lastly, a particular effort shall be made to ensure that school career guidance services and vocational training bodies receive the data.