The government is in the process of setting up a National Skills Council to identify skills shortages and recommend the necessary actions to be taken in order to address skills shortcomings in the required areas, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said announced this week.

Addressing the formal session of the Council on Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs held in Luxembourg on Monday, and speaking on the issues of migration and mobility, Dr Said stated that Malta’s priority is to focus on measures which help increase employability prospects of the Maltese. Malta wants to further increase the participation rates of women and older workers in the national workforce.

“Indeed, the government has been taking active steps to ensure that an adequate environment is created for people to be active in the labour market and measures to make work pay,” he explained.

“Malta is therefore committed to enhancing measures enabling the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities and enhancing flexible work arrangements. These measures will also help address the demographic challenges.”

Dr Said underscored the government’s continuous investment in education and training, skills upgrading and life-long learning for the population to be armed with the tools needed to adapt to the changes in the labour market and to increase workforce mobility.

He noted that that while migration and mobility could help to address demographic challenges and to augment workforce levels in a number of member states, generalisations should be avoided. In this context Malta is of the opinion that member states should retain their prerogative to determine the volumes of admission of third-country nationals.

During the session a discussion was held on the role played by the European Social Fund (ESF) in the implementation of the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy. Ministers presented their experiences with the European Social Fund. They pointed out the European Union’s future priorities and debated on how to improve the effective functioning and use of the European Social Fund.

Dr Said voiced Malta’s support to the EU 2020 priorities: “Malta is convinced that Cohesion Policy is one of the instruments that member states have at their disposal in order to reach the goals of this common strategy. Malta considers the European Social Fund as an important means to reach the main goal of a more competitive EU and of providing a better quality of life for its citizens. However, Malta emphasizes and will continue to stress that these challenges, although common, cannot be addressed by all member states in the same manner. Different EU member states should identify the needs and the projects and operations which are of relevance to them and to their territory.”

Dr Said stated that Malta was also in favour of the simplification of the implementation of the projects financed by EU funds.

Finally, the Council accepted the conclusions on “The Role of volunteering in social policy” and on “Meeting the demographic challenge: institutional cooperation among Member States on demographic issues and reconciling working time with family life − for compatibility of career and family”.