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Pascal Gruny at the head of a new parliamentary working group

Pascale Gruny, MEP

1. What is the reason for the creation of the parliamentary working group for the ESF now?

This working group was created by MEPs in June 2003 and its last meeting was held in February 2004. This group has been reconstituted in February 23, 2010. It is not an official group and its aim is to involve parliamentarians belonging to the Employment and Social Affairs Committee in the work of the ESF to reflect on the future of this Fund, its prospects and the difficulties it encounters. Its main focus is how to simplify the procedures of funding that are often very complex to implement in Member States.

2. Should this group be considered as rather European or French?



The Working Group is composed out of MEPs (of different nationalities) and therefore this group does not simply focus on France. I will bring forward the difficulties encountered by France in the implementation of this fund when I’ll have the details that could fuel the debate. If a Member State encounters the same difficulties and another Member State has already overcame this problem, it will be an exchange of best practices that will be quite appropriate to consider at European level


3. How does ESF respond to current challenges?



The current ESF challenges are to develop active policies to fight against unemployment, and social exclusion when accessing the labour market, improve vocational training including lifelong learning, adapt the workforce to new forms of work organization, fight against discrimination e.g. by sex, age, origin


4. What is the work programme you wish to follow? What are the expected results?



First of all, we shall start with an evaluation phase with representatives of the European Commission, then, during the upcoming meetings we will focus on the future of the ESF, particularly the financial perspectives and the EU 2020 Strategy.



5. How where you appointed at the head of this group? How does your background meet the requirements of this job?



My group has supported my candidacy as a President and as I work in the corporate world I have a good knowledge of the difficulties encountered in the field, the vocational training, the professional reconversion. Also, in my region (Picardy) unemployment is particularly high and I sincerely wish to do everything I can to fight against this scourge.




6. What impact do you think the new EU Strategy 2014-2020 will have on the ESF?



The new strategy outlines a vision of the social market economy for Europe for the 10 years to come which will enable the ESF to improve since the new strategy contributes to the objectives of the ESF, including the fight against unemployment, the improvement of vocational training, “a dropout rate reduced below the bar of 10%\" for example. The 2020 Strategy underlines that «75% of the population aged between 20 and 64 years must have a job\", and conditions conducive to the modernization of labour markets should be create.