This paper, and its stable companions, has been reporting over the past days about an initiative that was being taken by the Commission to increase the initiatives to help cut down on the Long-Term Unemployed (or LTUs in Europarl).

As reported elsewhere, the Commission was meant to announce this last week but then the migrants crisis put that on the backburner. (TMID 9 September pg 1). The Commission was said to be discussing this in yesterday's meeting but so far no word has come out in this regard.

In last week's issue of this paper, we reported a report regarding Malta and LTUs as found on the Commission's website. (TMBW 10 September pg 1). More about this later.

On Sunday, the sister paper carried a report on LTUs - Facts and Figures (TMIS 13 September pg 9).

And today we carry a report on some initiatives taken in hand by some member states with regards to LTUs (pg 6).

Both the table reproduced on the Sunday paper and the inferences of the Malta-grown report as carried last week do not seem to appreciate much of what has been done in Malta in this regard.

It was left to Minister Edward Scicluna in his Pre-Budget Consultation Business Breakfast (reported extensively in today's issue) to say that various government initiatives have brought back to the job market no les than 2,000 LTUs, which, given the size of the Maltese economy is a remarkable achievement and no mean feat.

As the minister inferred, this was achieved by various means including the hard cop and soft cop method - eg stopping benefits to the under-23 year-olds unless they entered a programme.

Other Eurozone member states may profitably learn from the Malta experience. The Commission itself, whose so vaunted and still unborn initiative was the subject of a seminar in Brussels, chose the soft path. After all, no new funds were available so the initiative consists mainly in bringing in a minimum of best-practice examples and insisting on the registration of the unemployed and the one-stop shop concept (which Malta still has to come around to implement). And the advisability of having the same official following up the same LTU.

As Malta could have told the Commission, there are more tools which could have been used and none is draconian at all. The result Malta obtained can be obtained by other countries if they out their mind to it.

However, there is still more that could be done in the Malta context. The secret of growth, as Minister Scicluna said yesterday, is to tap sources in the economy that have not been tapped at all. Thus, easing the way for women to leave their children while they go to work, can work wonders. So too helping LTUs get skills or improve on educational levels, as other organisations elsewhere in Europe do.

In the case of Malta, the afore-mentioned report speaks of a seeming inability to deliver what has many times been promised - a one-stop shop.

As the report said: "At present there are two distinct entities, under two separate Ministries, which cater for the unemployed. The ETC, responsible for their registration for unemployment, for the provision of career guidance, for training and for active labour market measures.

"The Department of Social Security, within the Ministry of Family and Social Solidarity, is responsible for the payment of benefits to those long-term unemployed who are eligible, and to manage the tapering of benefits.

" Information also flows officially from one to the other so that each one is kept updated on the number of registrants seeking employment: the DSS receives weekly updates from the ETC to ensure that the persons entitled to receive benefits actually receive them.