VENet goes Europe

About 80 participants followed the invitation to the „VENet Best Practice Seminar“ on 28th February in the “Steiermark Büro” in Brussels. The aim of the event was to present and mainstream the VENet Model on a European level. This innovative model of vocational education has been developed by the TCA “VENet” within the Equal programme. At the same time the national projects of the four TCA countries Austria, Cyprus, Germany and Poland were presented in an exhibition.

The seminar was opened with a keynote speech delivered by Peter Stub Jørgensen, Director in the European Commission, DG Employment. After the presentation of the VENet Model a high-ranking plenum discussed “Innovative strategies on the encouragement of disadvantaged people: perspectives and solutions”. Naturally, Karin Jöns from the European Parliament, Walter Wolf, representative of the European Commission, Charlotte Gruber from the Austrian project “BAP” and Fintan Farrell, director of the Europan Anti Poverty Network took different perspectives of the topic.

Nevertheless, there was general agreement among the panel that the Lisbon targets are still a far way off. The trend to “flexicurity” tends to stop at “flexi” and to forget about the security. In order to reach employment targets it is definitely not enough to create lots of new short term jobs. Quality, not quantity should be the key word for new working possibilities. The plenum agreed that the VENet Model is definitely a step into the right direction, however, it needs to be a tailor made programme to reach the most vulnerable group of the labour market – disadvantaged long term unemployed people.