On 20 November, EFEE members gathered in Brussels for the General Assembly meeting, hosted at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). In total 27 members participated from: IE, UK, NL, SI, CY, FI, BE, PT, IT, SE, NO, ME, EL, and HR. The meeting started with a work of welcome by Mr. Jacek Krawczyk, President of the Employers Group of the ESSC. Next, keynote speaker Denis Crowley, Head of Unit (DG EAC, Unit 2A – country analysis), took the floor. He informed members on the opportunities for education employers in the European Pillar of Social Rights, the European Semester process and the implementation of the European Education Area 2025. He ended his presentation with an invitation to strengthen the working relation with EFEE. For example by organising a joint meeting with ETUCE on how social partners in education could provide input to the Commission’s Education and Training monitor of next year, which will focus on the evolvement of the teaching profession. Furthermore, EFEE had invited its Swedish member Malin Looberger from SALAR to make a contribution on the role of national education employers in promoting quality education in collective agreement negotiations. In her presentation, she touched upon social dialogue structures in Sweden (including on collective agreements) and the joint efforts of employers and trade unions to guarantee the skills supply in education in the future (focusing on training, retaining and retraining of teachers) in Sweden. All members agreed that it would be useful to increase the sharing of good practices related to the those topics within EFEE also with the view to strengthen the position of education employers at national and European level vis-à-vis the trade union organisations in education. They therefore also welcomed the idea to install a specific EFEE Policy Working Group on this topic. Furthermore, additional Policy Working Groups could be started when consensus will be reached on the most relevant topics in the field of education, training, social affairs and employment.
Moreover the General Assembly approved EFEE’s strategy for 2019-2020 and gave its vote of confidence to General Secretary, Daniel Wisniewski, to execute the strategy the coming two years. Consequently the members evaluated the work of EFEE of last year (among others based on the feedback provided in the EFEE evaluation survey). The main requests for improvement were linked to better communication tools for EFEE members enabling them to directly contact one-another, and the need for enhanced policy work within EFEE. Taking into account these points of improvement, the General Assembly agreed on the final version of EFEE’s Work Programme for 2019. Furthermore all EFEE members were briefed on the upcoming meetings in 2019.
For more information, please contact: Daniel.wisniewski@educationemployers.eu