What are the seen and unseen costs when entering the labour market? What exactly contributes to the increased or decreased of the unemployment? How can we diminish the separation between the formal education system and the employers demand? Thursday, 10th December, CADI-Eleutheria Foundation and its guests have presented a series of answers during the “Institutional and educational barriers when the youth enter the labour market” conference. The debate started from the articles and comments collection on the same topic, released with this occasion, and which brought together the analyses from more than 20 contributors from the academic environment and civil society.
Taxation, excessive legislative or the minimum wage, as well as public policies concerning education as a universal size for all citizens are among the main norms that have negative effects, especially on youth and those without previous experience on the labour market. The guests have shown a new approach, using actual examples for supporting the necessity of reducing the administrative costs and bureaucratic barriers that limit the labour market and encouraging the private initiatives and public – private partnerships for supplying education services.
The discussion moderator was the journalist Constantin Rudnițchi, and it raised important questions regarding the issues and the alternatives of the way in which the relation between labour market and education services market, in which the public education is prevailing, functions.
Horia Terpe, Executiv Director of CADI-Eleutheria, argued in favour of a direction reversal, starting from the excess of legislative and regulation. Specifically, the problem presented was related to the quantity and quality of the laws. The labour demand is derived from the economic growth, but the laws and regulations excess raises the level of corruption from our country, influencing negatively the entrepreneurial efforts and, therefore, new workplaces` production. Furthermore, a large number of laws and public acts misuse the resources that could be invested more efficiently in the market. Horia Terpe also gave a series of possible solutions to this issue. For instance, the journalists should not appreciate just how many legislative initiatives a member of the Parliament has, but, also, how many unreasonable initiatives he opposed at and how many he managed to avoid, or how much public and private money he saved.
Pierre Garello, Professor of Economics at Aix-En-Provence University, showed the way in which the labour market liberalization in the European Union has contributed to the competition and employability growth. He analyzed in detail the workforce mobility phenomenon in the Single Market context. The reasons why the mobility of the citizens from states members of the European Union is comparatively smaller than the one from the American states are based on two matters: the existence of some regulations that are inhibiting it, like the minimum wage or other restrictions, and cultural elements (language and culture, latter being understood in its broad meaning). The main identified solution was that of a Romanian educational system reformation, becoming more open towards competition and curricular diversity. On the negative effects of the minimum or maximum wage type of restrictions, spoke Costel Stavarache, researcher and economist, who showed how these fuel the unemployment and are against the integration of the newcomers on the labour market.
Aura Matei, Programs-Coordinator at CADI-Eleutheria, and Vlad Topan, Lecturer at the Economic Sciences Academy, have presented feasible solutions for completing the formal educational system that, though free, it brings hidden long-term costs for all the labour market actors. In order for an education to be efficient, it has to answer the labour market dynamic demand, which is known and anticipated by the youth. Only if we had a free education market, in which various suppliers of educational services are competing and continually innovating in systems like those based on educational vouchers, we would answer to the economy and labour market’s dynamic.
The conference was organized within the “Initiatives on the labour market in the rural region” project POSDRU/135/5.2/S/130296, carried out between 31st March 2014- 15th December 2015, financed by the European Social Fund, through the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013.
At the meeting were present economists, researchers, entrepreneurs and partners of the labour market integration projects.
