As it had been earlier announced, 2021-2026 Employment Strategy was supposed to be adopted till the end of January and a public debate was organised to discuss this strategic document. In the meantime positions of ministries were gathered and now the Social and Economic Council is expected to make a final decision, after which the draft will be presented for adoption.
The main goal is to enable continuous employment growth and special attention will be paid to vulnerable groups: youth, women, people with disabilities. CATUS representatives took part in the creation of this document but it is to be seen whether trade union’s proposals will be adopted.
“We demanded that a way to motivate unemployed people to register more often at the National Employment Agency had to be found, all registers on employed and unemployed people in the country bound together, National Employment Agency needed to have insight into the resources collected based on contributions and their use and finally employer’s payment of contributions in case of unemployment had to be reinstated ”, says Sanja Paunović, from CATUS, for Politika.
In the new Strategy Draft it is mentioned that in 2019 a ratio of the long-term unemployed out of the overall number of the unemployed, as recorded by the National Employment Agency, was 66% and the rate of long-term unemployment was 6.1%. At the end of 2026 it is expected that through the implementation of this Strategy the ratio of the long-term unemployed will be 61% and the rate of long-term unemployment will amount to 1,9%, which representS a 5% reduction, more precisely 4.2% compared to the previous period. As envisaged by the Active Employment Policy, in 2026 the plan is to allocate 0.2% of GDP resources, compared to 2019 when the portion amounted to 0.08% of GDP resources.
As the public debate is soon coming to an end, Work Group of the National Convention on the EU explained that the draft of the National Employment Strategy 2021-2026 represented a step back compared to the previous strategy where the targeted value equalled 0.5% of the GDP. Such small sums will keep Serbia at Europe’s back. In 2018 Active Employment Policy Measures included 5.1% out of 100 unemployed people while Romania had the smallest coverage (5.3%) and Belgium the largest (76.5%). The coverage in 2019 fell to 4.7% – says the announcement.
Even though EC Serbia progress Report for 2020 says that there is ‘a lack of financial and institutional resources for employment and social policy’ and strategy goals include labour market inclusion, decent work and high quality jobs, proposed measures do not lead to the realization of those goals.
“While previous strategy defined goals that aimed to improve the status of 10 vulnerable groups, among which there are Roma people, returners by the re-admission agreement, rural population, internal migrants and refugees and redundant workers, new strategy draft proposes measures for only four groups: social benefit users, women, youth and people with disabilities”, reminds Work Group of the National Convention on the EU.
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