 So, good morning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Stephanie and I'm the project manager of the March project. We are very happy to see you here today. We have the pleasure to welcome about 25 participants here in this room, but we have also another 30 people following us online. So, it would be a great opportunity actually to exchange with colleagues with a diverse professional background. We have representatives of public employment agencies, trade unions, representatives of the private sector. So, we are very much looking forward to a lively discussion with you. On practicalities, please be aware that one should wear a mask at all times, except of course for the speakers or when you want to raise a question. If you want to contact yourself, the Wi-Fi code is over there on the whiteboard. So, this event is an opportunity to go through a real check and to raise some a little bit on the opportunities that also challenges the development of labour mobility schemes in Belgium and in Europe today. So, we will start the day with a European perspective with some welcoming remarks from a representative of the European Commission, Laura Couradeau, who is the head of unit for the Legal Pathways and Integration. She will join us shortly and this will be followed by a few words from our colleague Sertri Lano, who is our regional thematic specialist on labour mobility. After this few introductory remarks, we will dive into the specifics of the Belgium labour market and we will get a perspective analysis of the workforce challenges from our colleague from Agoria. And this will lead us to a final discussion, which will be moderated by Davie Maast from Boka. So, we would have the pleasure to actually welcome Grigory Korn, Javelinah El-Basma Hayri and Nicola Van Bokersal, who will give the first respective position of the three federal entities. But this event will also be an opportunity to discuss how the labour migration schemes can contribute to tackle workforce challenges and to present a much project. So, let me tell you just a brief word about the project. I'm sure that you're already aware that this project has been developed by the IOM and it is funded by the European Commission. It was launched in January 2020, so just this year. And here in Belgium, our programme is implemented by partners from Boka, Agoria and Vidya Bay, who are also present here in this room. So, the project aims obviously at enabling companies from four European countries, so Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy, to overcome their workforce challenges by recruiting highly qualified talents from Nigeria and Senegal. So, during the presentation that will be made by Hogue the Nobel, my colleague, we will highlight some key features of our programme and we will discuss how our project aims at of course meeting the needs of the crisis sector, but also contributing to transfer of knowledge, development somehow of the countries of origin, in order to make this model sustainable. And the last word of today will come from the CEO of the company who has already joined one of our previous projects with Tunisia and he has a first-hand experience to share with you about international recruitment. So, without further ado, I will now give the floor to Mrs. Corrado who will join us remotely and will display her welcoming remarks. Sorry, we cannot hear you. We are trying not to succeed. So, we still cannot hear you. So, could you please check also on your side whether the microphones are active because we did some testing here. Everything seems to work on this side. Now, we still cannot hear you. I also think so. Yes, that's better. Now we hear you. Thank you. It's better now? Yes. We haven't heard anything yet, so I'm afraid you will have to start. Okay. So, are the inconveniences of online meetings or hybrid meetings? Can you hear me now? Is this okay now? Yes, we can hear you. Yes. Okay. So, I start from the very beginning. So, good morning. I'm glad to be able to join you very quickly and hope that the connection will continue to function. I wanted to thank IOM for organizing this event in the context of the match project and on sustainable approaches to labour migration and recruitment strategies. As you might be aware from the European Commission side, we have been trying to argue for many years that we need to use labour migration more strategically to address labour and skill shortages in EU labour markets. We don't do this sufficiently. We know that on a global scale, we are not competitive, very competitive, without other countries in attracting the skills and the talent we need, especially when it comes to highly skilled third-country workers. So, we need to do more. This is why already in the implementation of the European Agenda of Migration, besides acting on the legislative side, for example, with the reform of the Blue Card Directive, which we will try now to conclude in the next month and relaunch the negotiations because we need better rules on attracting highly skilled workers to Europe. But in addition to that, we have encouraged the development of projects on labour migration and mobility with key third countries, in particular at the moment with Africa, as part of our strategy on labour migration and our relations on migration with third countries. This is one of the projects that have been developed in that context with EU financial support. We have five others that are now ongoing and I'm very glad that Belgium is participating not only to this but also to other projects that we are supporting. And we are hoping to develop more incorporation with member states in the next months. We have a call for proposal open so we can finance more projects in the near future. Of course, now the situation is challenging for mobility and migration in general due to the impact of COVID, but things are starting to progressively improve. There have been travel restrictions, of course, that have limited also labour mobility to the European Union. But I'm glad that now things gradually started to resume and I'm also happy that you have in the context of this project, you managed to rearrange the activities to take into account of the evolving situation. So we will have to show a certain flexibility also in the future, but we are confident that we can gradually and progressively resume normal activities and relaunch labour migration and mobility as well from third countries. So I welcome very much this project. I think that then Gertry will go into the details of it. So I will not, but I'm glad that there are essential and key elements like skill developments, capacity building and knowledge sharing that are very important in all projects of this kind. It's also very important that a very solid and strong cooperation has been established between public authorities and the private sectors. Of course, cooperation with employers is key in this kind of project. So I'm very glad that this is the case. Now coming to the future, as you might have heard next week with the commission will finally issue its plans on the new migration and asylum package. I cannot disclose today the details. This will be disclosed on the 23rd of September, but I can certainly tell you that labour migration will be part of the new strategy and will be an important part, including in the cooperation with third countries. So we want to build on the experience that we have had so far as regards the pilot projects on labour migration. We want to upgrade and further develop that in cooperation with member states and launch through partnerships with third countries on skills, talent and mobility. So I look forward to further cooperate with all of you on this project and maybe also on other projects in the future. I thank you very much for this invitation and I wish you fruitful discussions. I cannot stay connected myself, but my colleagues will be and will be happy also to contribute to the discussions in the course of the morning. Thank you very much. If you'd like to take the floor, I think I have position distance from here. I'll remove the mask just for the opening remarks. So my name is Yesa Zalo. I work for the IOM Regional Office in Brussels as the senior labour mobility and human development specialist and I'm very happy to be here with you today for our first stakeholder meeting, at least the first physical meeting with all of you under the match project. Just as Laura Corrado already explained, we as IOM are very lucky to be able to implement one of the legal migration pilot projects that we do financing in an effort to give more support to member states to try new models of managing skills, mobility and labour mobility. It's true that in the past few years, there was a bit less attention to that in 2015 to 2016 with a large inflow of refugees and a lot of attention was to how do we manage this immediate arrival. However, we think it's very important to also have a long-term view, how do we manage migration in the long term, how can migration also benefit us in the long term and to think around migration in a more strategic way. As Laura said, there will be a new packed lunch and of course we as IOM hope to see also this long-term vision reflected in the packed so beyond let's say also those discussions around you know the pilot system also look at issues related to labour mobility and how will we cooperate with those countries in the long term to strategically manage migration. As IOM we are convinced that labour and skills mobility is very important and can benefit all of us. First of all, we all know that in Belgium as in many other countries in the EU, we're facing more and more Asian population, we're getting old unfortunately and it also reflects on our labour market the definitely gaps that are there and I think you know other experts will go into that in a bit more detail for Belgium. So there is a need there in Belgium and in other European countries while in Africa we see the opposite as an extremely young occupation and on the other hand labour markets that are not able to let's say absorb all these you know young talents. So to us it makes sense that you know how can we you know manage it in a way that benefits us all how can we support these young talents in Africa to access opportunities in countries like Belgium and other countries where we're actually you know in need of such talents for our labour market. Much is you know a project that would like to step up let's say a model to see how can we manage in practice this labour and skills mobility and much is of course a project in Belgium but also a few other European countries we have the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy and we work in partnership with two countries in Africa which are Senegal and Nigeria. The idea of much is to give young talents in those countries the opportunity to have a work experience in the EU of course based on the men that are here what are the profiles that we need and to match so to speak these African talents with the needs that we see in the companies here in Europe. At the same time of course much is also looking at fostering an exchange between different actors private sector public actors here in Europe but also back in Senegal and Nigeria because we think you know there is a lot that can be done also by sharing these experience by building capacity for example of a public employment service in Senegal in Nigeria in terms of how to manage you know international labour mobility and actors like maybe a base of Spanish public employment service could play an important role in that as well as you know the other partners of our much project. So for us we're very keen to see how this model can work to try this to test it but hopefully to develop something that can be successful and sustainable on a longer term and this is also why you feel the involvement of the private sector is really key because for labour mobility schemes to be successful and it's not just enough that we have a project like much so that we have the support of the European Commission first and foremost you know we need the interest of the private sector of the employers and we have to develop a scheme that also you know matches their needs so it's great to see that the private sector is of the presence today and we intervene in the discussions and indeed unfortunately when we start as a much project I think you know a few weeks later the first information about COVID started circulating. First you are still thinking okay maybe this is something short term but the more and more we of course realise that you know the virus might be with us for a longer time and not only with us here in Europe also in the African countries that we are targeting so this has an impact on the project we have reflected a bit with the colleagues you know what can we do but eventually we came to the conclusion that our project is still relevant COVID or not because COVID also showed that we really rely on migrant workers here in Europe you know whether it's for our food supply chains you know the agricultural workers the seasonal workers that suddenly you know couldn't enter to feed strawberries and the other goods same for the health professionals same for even you know IP support for digital solutions that we needed so badly you know all of these show how much we rely actually on migrants migrant workers and I also am convinced that you know we will need to engage you know migrants in the social economic recovery as you know we move forward so I hope today would be an opportunity for all of us to discuss how can we do that in Belgium to share some you know strategic vision for promoting labour migration to Belgium how can we get prepared and hopefully you know we can then test this in practice soon and you know develop a successful model so with this I think I'll conclude the opening remarks I'm very much looking forward to the discussion thank you thank you very much and we're going now to start with the panel discussion there are the panelists to actually join their moderator and you can just give me there was a test to see whether you were still waiting so good morning to all of you my name is Jeroen Fransen I work for Agoria which is the sector federation of technology companies representing over 2000 technology and digital companies I know that most of you are already convinced about the importance of migration projects otherwise you would not be here I suppose but I want to draw the context the Belgian context a little bit deeper because there's a sense of urgency how do we know for three years I've been examining examinating the situation of Belgian labour markets and the impact of digitalization on that labour market we did it based on free analysis first analysis is a quantitative analysis so we drew the labour force we drew the labour force baseline what is the actual state of our labour market who's working in which regions in which sector holding which function and then based on economic growth numbers national bank of Belgium federal planning bureau city for European database we were able to draw the evolutions of the amount so what will the numbers of functions look like between now and 2030 first by heart so no problem so first analysis is quantitative analysis second analysis is the qualitative analysis there we looked into the skills one might need at this moment in a digitalizing world what skills are important at this stage but again we also drew the 2030 perspective so how will the evolution of skills between now and 2030 look like that's the second analysis and then the third analysis and that is in this context perhaps the most important one we also analyzed the supply whom at this stage is able to work in Belgium and based on demography based on results of education based on our retirement age and also based on our migration policy who will be able to work by 2030 and based on those three thank you based on those three three analysis we were able to launch a matching algorithm saying that okay these are the baskets of needs for 2030 and let's try to fill these baskets in the best possible way with the potential with the supply and then we see that some of the baskets will be easy to fill others will be impossible to fill and others will be stable and from those from that matching algorithm we were able to draw four conclusions two of them are really really important in this context first conclusion everyone working in Belgium needs to get their digital skills up to level that's not not a surprise second conclusion for 310 000 Belgians simple upskilling will not be enough 310 000 Belgians between now and 2030 will lose their jobs because they hold a profile that will no longer be in demand strategy was upskilling second strategy is really re-skilling and even if we manage to get everyone or to have everyone on board in these first two groups so the first group everyone stays relevant in the second group we find jobs for new jobs for everyone even if we managed to do that then we will lack 584 000 people or we will be able we will be unable to fulfill 584 000 demands for jobs between now and 2030 so that's a huge number that number of course will have to be solved with an activation policy we will have to activate people in Belgium to work the numbers say that if everyone works until the age of 69.7 there will no longer be a problem on our labour market i gave several several presentations on this topic but i never felt a lot of enthusiasm on the contrary they want to can of coke at least so no but we need to find other solutions working longer for youngsters this could also mean start to work earlier in in alternating educational systems for instance but we have an activation mission in our country our part of the solution will be the further implementation of technology i'm going to make a bold statement but we need to automate more to kill more jobs not to take away your job Davey or your job but to get repetitive tasks out of the work to get the dangerous tasks out of the work and to avoid people's decisions where they make more mistakes than machines do so we need in fact to humanize work and in those last two categories technology as a facilitator and activation the match project suits perfectly into that context why in our country we managed to activate quite well our our unemployed at this moment we did and please do not take COVID into account but we managed to activate over the last few years close to 220 000 people but we activate them in health sector in education in the sectors with a high cost for the government so with low productivity and what we do not manage is for everyone entering the labor market to push other persons to a higher level so we have a gap on the letter we have needs at the pretty high level to make this technology work efficiently to make this technology work in such a way that our gross domestic product goes up and creates like really high added value and we calculated that one tent of the solution could be found through migration so between now and 2030 they're already based on the actual policy is an effect of plus 160 000 through migration but we think that we could reach or grow this number by 30 000 entities actual effect based on the actual policy is plus 160 000 we think that we could find 30 000 profiles more and invite them to contribute to our GDP perhaps one last remark on the political side reactions are pretty positive of course the right side says I'm not expressing on my own political feelings but the right side says we should think avoid to invite too much people to our country migration puts pressure on our social security and that's their vision so I would respond to that that migration also could contribute to our social security to our gross domestic product on the other side on the left side I often got a remark aren't we organizing a new brain drain in for instance maghreb countries so those are the two reactions I heard most on the political scene in fact so as a group project management team we should take that into account last remark because I'm pretty much through my 10 minutes I think last remark is of course COVID so what is the impact of COVID on this project okay it's it's a fact that the bench with candidates with with which persons searching for employment there are more people on the on the bench at this at this stage but we agree with Vidya B with 4M and others that this situation will probably only last somewhere between 12 and 18 months and then we will be at the same level that we were at the end of 2019 so close to the situation where the labor demands outreaches or is more important than the labor supply so yes COVID created a new situation but it doesn't it doesn't change our long-term policy and the fact that we have to look for structural solutions that was my contribution and thank you very much for that energizing you know speech thank you thank you Yerun when I've heard your presentation a couple of times but each time I find it really actually really interesting to put our project into the context of more structural needs from the the Belgium labor market we will now have a panel discussion moderated by my colleague Daisy Maas to see how the representatives of the three regions here and in Belgium react to the data that has just been disclosed by Yerun and also unveil their strategic vision to develop labor migration in Belgium thank you very much Daphne I hope everyone here is me I would like to introduce first the panel members very shortly welcome to Jamila which is a lawyer within the policy unit of Deportments of Work and Social Economy of Flanders region and next to me then Nicolas van Bokostow advisor to the Minister in Charge of Employment in the Walloon region and at the right side and with the Flanders advisor to the Minister in Charge of Employment for the Brussels region so the three regions within our country or represented I am Daisy Maas from Roka the Chamber of Commerce as Flanders and I'm happy to have this panel discussion regarding actual labor mobility schemes and the opportunities of economic migration of the presentation of Yerun I remembered some statements like digitalization is necessary to kill some jobs retraining upskilling won't be sufficient for our labor market and the opportunity and potential of economic migration is quite big one tenth of the labor need supply has to be actually labor migration so maybe I want to first ask the panel members short reaction on the presentation of Yerun their findings on the numbers and potential solutions maybe I will start since I am presenting the mic I will try to take a bit of the business thank you very much for the presentation it was very clear and we are developing a new Flemish labor migration policy we are working very hard for about a few years now and COVID-19 has made things much more difficult people migrants were not allowed to get to the European countries Belgium did not deliver the VDB but now we have found solutions but COVID-19 has also given a solution for the Flemish region now since March 2019 we asked the migrants to to do their application online instead of by before it was just a paper file that we get so we're working very hard on the new Flemish policy but I think we will get to that more in detail I will give the mic to my colleague thank you very much I hope I will be I will have no problem with my performance first of all thank you for inviting me and to invite by through me the minister of employment of the northern region we really appreciate to to participate to this kind of event so thank you very much thank you to Yerun for the introducing presentation which was very interesting and I think the numbers are really relevant we know them that's it's good to to say that we are facing a huge challenge as many friends and said the COVID crisis should not prevent us to to have some long-term policies because upskilling and risk killing of labor labor market forces is another huge challenge but the crisis forced us to take some policies to maintain jobs before creating jobs so this is right now the the biggest issue we have to take as a great opportunity at a regional level that I would like to intervene and I think it's the purpose of the second question so I will wait to to to the to specify the policies you are we are implementing thank you so thank you everyone and we are I'm very pleased to be here and to to discuss with you because we are in in Brussels now working on the a new legislation frame so it's really nice to to see you and to discuss with you in this process but about the presentation I think we are quite okay with everything I said I think economic migration is one of the response to the digitalization of the labor market but minister of employment professional formation and digital transition so we are really the minister in Brussels to to try to have a global response to to that so yes we have really to work on upgrading the skills of the workers and of the job seekers so these are really important stuff in Brussels we have a lot of workers we have some difference with the Flemish region and also it is with the Rallon region so we will have who will really have to work hard and harder on upskilling and upgrading the the competence of workers and job seekers so there are a lot of things to do there but of course economic migration is important Brussels region is the smallest region in Belgium but we have around 40 percent of all the single permit of work permit so we need to be attractive and we want to be attractive for a high profile so we will continue to to discuss about that after but yeah there is different topics but for sure economic migration is one but it's not the only answer for sure okay thank you for the answers I heard already from Grigori that there are some differences between the regions maybe my next question can be a little bit more explain in detail what are the differences between the regions and the strategy maybe are there any plans I heard already from Brussels that there are plans to change some legislation but maybe very shortly what the vision of the regions is in regard to economic migration because lake supply will always be a problem with economic migration as one of the of the solutions and of course not the solution but it's only one part of the solution of course thank you yes so as my colleague already mentioned the economic migration policy maybe just a short explanation is is regionalized in the sixth state before that means that each region is responsible for the economic migration policy that means that each region develops his own for her for her own policy we started um we kicked off a new flamish policy on January the first 2019 for the third country national employees and I read that the Brussels region has implemented a bit of the same it's a bit the same I did not analyze it thoroughly but I think it's a same policy as the flamish has it's a bit sad it is maybe not the right word but you have three different policies but I think that our main strategy is to focus on the concentric model so we have a concentric model so we first have to activate the people who are in Belgium in the different regions and start and and try to activate them in order to fill in the gaps if it's not possible we are looking in european country the second circle and if we cannot find that talent there then we are looking for third countries so that concentric approach is very important it is not we do not get to the market market of countries immediately it's just when we we cannot find the talent here and we cannot activate that talent we focus on economic migration so that's a very interesting approach maybe a few statistics so I mentioned that we have new flamish policies since the first of January 2019 in 2019 we have delivered 10 000 work permits 8 000 were for highly skilled profile 1200 were for the structural shortage occupation for the structural shortage occupations we have provided a list it's the dynamic list of 20 professions that is open for migration one of the professions that it mentioned on this is a truck driver really truck drivers um 100% 100% 100% 100% are provided to people workers and 402 other categories so it's uh the statistics are very clear we have delivered 8 000 worker with two high skill profile that means we have implemented the policy that works and I hope we can fill in the gaps. Thank you for the volume region we do not have such labor immigration policy I mean maybe not so concentric because we our main goal is to fill the gap between companies demand and job seekers and workers skills offer and we are we try to to fill the gap independently that if it's third country workers or European workers or Belgian workers but that's our main goal to to reach that goal mr. Christy Maria is building a professional training plan for what we are with two other two set goals first of all is to to develop a training offer for jobs job suffering of workforce shortage which is an important issue in what we are and the second goal is to develop training offers for jobs of the future jobs that are will be will be created thanks to or because of digitalization and despite that are additionally of that's functional training plan we we are looking for we are thinking of digital strategy for and we are implementing several projects to build or to contribute to this strategy and it's very it's various project we have projects from we open phone as easy and project called start digital and the main goal of this project is to obscuring the skills of job seekers and we have a number of projects at the regional at the level which is a skill and skills and it's more oriented towards the companies and workers in the companies it's also a project of at this stage upscaling and then we have more in link with mr. competencies the development of training centers we're doing for training centers in wanda but five are specialized in the intake in digitalization companies we are right now developing them or reinforcing them and the last measure is the job choking job coaching we fall sorry so before I coach coaches the job seekers and we are integrating digital factor in that coaching in order to train them from the start with digital skills so that's my contribution to the same question sorry it's not really oriented towards labor migration but for us labor migration is integrated in the whole policy I just mentioned yeah as I spoke before but the other thing I will just speak now about economic migration but in Brussels we have really two big views or ideas of economic migration one is to tackle a job in shortage because we have some job there and there are not job seekers have no competencies now so we have to work on upgrading their competencies but for now we have to have a answer to that so we we really want to have economic migration in that we are working with actually we have a dynamic view of job in shortage we are not for now working on with the list we have a back office list but actually is looking in the in the database to know if there is a lot or enough job seekers with the demanded job competencies to answer to a job description so we are trying to work in a dynamic way not with a static list that maybe if you are looking for someone who is speaking three language you can have two thousand job seekers for one job but he doesn't have the competencies for this special job so we are trying to look in the dynamic way so we can answer really to the job in shortage if for the future we are trying to have a list because it can have a predictability it's easier for companies and for the people to know what are the job that are for sure in shortage but we want to continue to work in that dynamic way with actually and the second way is that Brussels is dynamic we have a lot of small companies and they need a high profile and we really want to attract high profile so like Flanders we try to put the high profile in a better situation in Brussels so it goes faster to have the permit they can have a permit for three years they can have unlimited permits so we want to help them to stay here or to go back but if they want to stay here we want to attract them because it's important for Brussels and for the economic development of Brussels so yeah for sure we have these two ways of working and yeah we will continue to do it because we are a little bit now we still are working with the federal legislation so it's really hard for everyone to to understand what are the rules in Brussels so we are working on the new Brussels legal frame and I hope that in a few months we will have it at least the first lecture in the the government yeah for sure okay thank you all yeah of course sorry just a little correction speaking about the project I say that it's only obscuring but I made a mistake we are doing a reskilling too because in detail the companies some companies the panel of companies will be coached to elaborate a new training term in within the company and then for example maybe a worker will be needed in the future so the company will have to make a choice first of all first choice I keep my worker but he will do another thing that he has made he has done until now or I fired a worker and I'm looking for a new one and as a public authority to maintain the employee we prefer that the company choose the first choice to keep keeping or her and to give him or her the new skills for the future okay thank you for this clarification but I think for the point of review of the companies it's really an end-to-end story obscuring reskilling attracting you as citizens actually just to to to be able to fill in the vacancies I heard something also regarding more the procedural elements so yeah we have of course this you know permit framework in addition some regional legal frameworks it's not that simple anymore I think so the Singapore is now three years in place or there any adjustments needed what are the visions on the single permit has it been more easy to attract these people of is it not that easy also seen the impact of COVID-19 that mobility was not easy at all what are the thoughts about that single permit change yes exactly so we have implemented the director's concerning the single permit so it's I think we're about yeah one year and a half two years it has simplified a bit so we deliver work permits for highly skilled professionals for three years before it was a permit for one year so each year he has to renew the work permit now we have a one permit instead of two of course the so we have some procedural adjustments so I already explained that since March 2019 you you can apply online it's not online it's through mail that's because we are working on two counters so we have a counter of the Department of Work social economy both to be a sale okay so that's a counter where the first country nationals can apply online so we are working in two or three phases it's normally I think it's the first of January 2021 that it has to be active but we also have we have to make the same exercise for the holders of a professional card so the entrepreneurs we're also working on a unique counter that that is on the federal level so with the region it's called the unique counter of the mosa it contains of three phases so the first two phases are for the single permit to work permit and the last phase third phase is for the professional card we are struggling with a bit of issues we are working on new policy concerning entrepreneurs so the professional card it's federal law of 1965 so it's very old and we want a new Flemish policy to attract innovative entrepreneurs to attract easily attract startups and scale ups etc but we talked with the other regions and I think we don't they don't have any plans to work new legislation and new policy concerning the entrepreneurs so I think it will be an issue for the activation of the unique counter the mosa so the the people of the hold the professional cards cannot do this online but we have the unique counter on the level of our department so for Flanders it will be able to apply online the last thing we have introduced a single permit it was not easy because you have a cooperation with different regions you have the interpretation of art and articles that is different between the regions that was different not anymore now you have also the federal government of work was in we've been involved you have the the migration office who has been involved and it's not easy to set up the strategy so I'm very glad that we have a single permit and I hope that we will soon have a new policy for the professional part thank you well that's quite complete in one year we we just let's say like this in brackets implemented the new legal framework through a night governmental activity it adds to two benefits first benefits was the reducing of delay within the procedure and the other one was that thanks to this implementation of new legal framework we we could in transport position of various directive this I have been taken in 2019 at the end of the former one government by the former minister of employment so it's quite too early to to evaluate the benefits or the adjustment that that should be made at the level but we are making a little analysis right now the variation is being made and soon we will be able to take to be identified the adjustment to make them so Michael I forgot to mention that I'm not the specialized specialist for permits but my colleague told me about common electronic platform and I like to be mobilized the name okay so we have to originally our our plan is to contribute to implement this platform as soon as possible because we think that a unique or single desk for all the countries worker or foreign workers a unique desk in Belgium would be something I think welcome because we know we all know the complexity of Belgium and Belgium sometimes so every time a column unique desk can be made I think it should be a better for for you workers yes so we are very happy with the new e-counter single e-counter because Brussels is in the center so it's easier for everyone I think if there is one gate to everyone to introduce the demand to follow the demand complete the demand to see if the permit is still valid and so on so it will be very simple for everyone I think and easier for everyone to introduce and to follow the permit so that's a very good thing I think for the next year for us like a little bit we are we have just implemented single permit but because we wanted to be to be ready and to be sure that the delay for the procedure will not increase so we are we were happy that the delay were short and not like in the federal level where it costs really bigger than before so we are really happy about that so now we are working on the the new Brussels legal frame we want to simplify we want to be attractive and we want to add the predictability about like I said the job shortage and we are still now seeing stakeholders and to be sure of what we want to do and what we will put in that legal framework but I think the single permit was done the transposition was done during the refugee crisis and I think there may be too much thing that are now in the single permit frame and it's complicated for for a student or researchers it will be more difficult in few months than before for other permits they have to even with an exemption you have to introduce a single permit I think the ID before was in the yeah I think there was a little bit yeah it was because of the refugee crisis that maybe more complicated now and I hope that the new federal government we can in the next year maybe simplify and go better with this single permit because I think it's it's better for now for a lot of new procedure but for some it's really really more complicated and I hope that we can find solution there for the next year okay thank you all for your input and feedback I think I'm showing here the three regions the three authorities I think it's very important that they work intensely together and work with maybe more coverage the different regions and the rules I think that covariance is very important as well I heard some three keywords I'm finding I think timing to attract those people is very important so I heard also from the company that it's better now but with sort of the single permit it was very difficult to get the single permit in time digitalization I think not only for the companies it's important for the people for the employees but also for the government the digital the procedures I think it would be make it very easy as from my point of view of the company of course and then also I think it's very interesting that the last point you mentioned with a week to simplify things maybe put some corrections to the legal framework to in order to have yeah a really simple understandable legislation rules because I think that's very important if I can be a make a conclusion from my point of view to invest in that communication towards companies with regard to economic migration because I think a lot of companies are still not knowing what the opportunities are and the potential of economic migration I think that's also really important task of the authorities and the government in order to have that solution the part of the solution for the future to keep in mind I think maybe it's no time to to have also the opportunity to ask some questions to the panel list of course to you of course or maybe if there are any additions from our speakers it's also possible of course but already want to take a tweet and I need to have this question right I see that you have already heard one if it's okay like two minutes for some reactions two reactions on what has been said and two thoughts in addition to what has been said you want you can also go without the microphone first of all on COVID I think that COVID could also offer us a new approach on labor migration labor migration could also mean inviting people from other countries to come over here for project management project briefings return to their countries and work there so that they stay in touch with their mother country that's the way we all do it at this moment we all work from home from time to time we go back to the office we get project briefings to get in touch with our colleagues and then we have our work at home so labor migration does not always have to mean I move and I will never see my original country again so that's the first thought second thought on your remark Nicolas on we need to maintain jobs and that's catching the most of our attention at this stage I tend to agree yet I don't know if we have to do a lot of efforts to if a cashier for instance is losing her job at this stage I don't think it needs a lot of effort to find her a new job as a cashier this job is disappearing so I plan for a maximum use of inactivity periods to really upgrade either towards the sectors in high need education health or either in a technological development in fact so every period of inactivity such as caused by COVID should be used as an opportunity to upskill and not to maintain jobs that at the end are not sustainable jobs that's my second remark third remark on the concentric approach of course Glander says we work with our own labor market potential first and then we go and look into Europe and then we go and look abroad well our own labor market of course that can be a priority but the upskilling movement there is a long one really re-skilling projects or re-skilling paths or somewhere between 12 months and 24 months so it's not just giving one or two trainings and we can activate those people as it's a work on the long run European labor market is stable needs are more or less the same in every European country before we had some Romanian coders or Lithuanian coders but the market has developed in such a way that the needs are the same in Europe so I think that the concentric approach does not have to mean that we consider labor migration in these kinds of projects as third priority it's an important track and then my last remark is on the Brussels region Brussels is more than Belgian capital of course Brussels is also the European capital we really need highly skilled people over here compete with China and the Asian countries to compete with the United States I am talking about computer power I'm talking about artificial intelligence I'm talking about development of health care development of vaccine and stuff like that European scale is too small to really compete so I think that we have to gather skills we have to gather knowledge Europe and Africa to become a counterweight for other highly developed regions such as the United States such as the Asian countries those were my four remarks that I would like to ask to the debate I think Nicholas has also hearing you and preparing my answer I just wanted to have but it was prior to to many of us in the contribution if that's if we need labor forces and we we make sense of the nation sensibilization towards the companies to to to have this this kind of office as public authorities it's my personal opinion and as well as the miscellaneous opinion that we need to to implement or develop the tools as public authorities to work on these these foreign workforce and so we need to digitalize ourselves we cannot say okay we are facing digitalization issues and we need some skills from first workers and then when they are going to to Belgium to tenders to they cannot face technical problems or electronic problems or paper problems we need to be current with the message we send to the foreign market and to our companies that are looking for this work process which was by my contribution I wanted to edit in reaction to your conclusion and as I have the microphone maybe I will ask or response to what has just been said I agree totally to the maintaining of of employment that's why I prefer a thing of maintaining of employment that's maintaining employment that's the division we have and that's why we are we really like concepts or it's more than the concept but I didn't mention it yet it's a long life learning or long life training or whatever and it implies that yes during your career or your life you will need to to to be redirected or to to choose another direction and you will need to be so yeah I totally agree we agree with that and that's another big issue we have to tackle I see that Cédric has a question yes so good morning after the question for you guys I was wondering if in Beijing or in one of the regions you have you have like a skills observatory or competencies observatories to have an idea about what what do we have on the ground what do we need what will we need in the coming months years in order to identify the gaps and how would we fit these gaps with training and you were talking about this career path and I agree before we have to get trained and cashier excuse me cashier has skills other competencies that might be used for something else and once these people are trained where do they go where are they available where can they be seen where can they be visible for employers so do you have something like this are you planning to develop something similar any other questions maybe from the audience first or maybe we take two or three and then we go back to the panel yes hello good morning everybody my question will relate to what was said about predictability of skills shortages and my question relates to okay how do the different structures in Belgium cooperate with the private sector on this our for example sector federations employer federations or chambers of commerce involved in a dialogue and this will also link to the question that was raised by a city right now as to okay how can the matching of skills of available talent and the needs of employers be possibly optimized in that regard I'm working for the association of european chambers of commerce and industry and some of our members notably in Germany Slovenia Italy have very powerful tools available already right now to provide the necessary skills matching and also do wearable the skills forecast you in their respective countries thank you yeah good morning I'm equal you are also from a company into Europe so you're already 30 years busy with trying to fill some gaps in between in the belgium labor market in fact by recruiting roads I have two maybe our questions of course related to this subject on the one hand we heard your room telling about the sense of urgency and then I'm always thinking government and sense of urgency that's not an easy thing so my question is how this will be done in fact then how can we speed up some things which are quite urgent and on the other hand that it's a bit linked to that okay there's always a lot of about procedures and single permit and things you can improve and so on all this of course will help but I think from my experience the main or one of the main issues to attract people is to promote the country if you go all over the world what do people know about belgium that it's very complicated and we pay a lot of taxes that's in fact basically what they know so we need to promote also our country and are we going to promote foreigners, russian regions, valonia, belgium whatever but I think it's an important thing to to think about how can we put belgium on the map as being top of mind when people are thinking about working somewhere else and in their own country yes thank you so for the observatory we have one in Brussels it's called view Brussels it's with actually Brussels formation and they have a Brussels so they have done last year a big social economic monitoring and now they are working on the also job shortage and so on done the protectability on it so yeah it's one of the topic and one of the mission of the view Brussels it's going better and better and we want to improve it so that is on the only administrative side on the other side we have the Pôle empoir formation it's a collaboration between public sector so administration and social partners in Brussels and I think two of them at least I think maybe three but at least two are really working on job shortage it's for construction because there are a lot of job shortages so they are working on how to tackle it and how to to to find and how to to see what will be the next job shortage but also in digital city where agoria is in Brussels and we really have to to think about what will be the next job so we want to to work with social partners in that in that way yes so it's also answered a little bit the question of the the protectability we are trying to to work on it and we are working with social partners at least in the Pôle empoir formation but our door is always open if you want to to discuss with the Brussels region about just job shortage and what's your vision to tackle it you can always come to to speak with us we are open with discussion and so no problem and for the attractivity of Brussels for sure we have to work on it it's maybe not the mission of the employment minister but as it's been said we are working in Brussels also on the reform of professional cards so for entrepreneurs and for companies and I hope that we can work with Brussels and with the minister of foreign commerce to attract more and more companies and entrepreneurs in Brussels and to to give a better image of Brussels so we are working on that but it's the other topics of economic migration it's on the professional card but maybe we can expand that discussion to single permit and work permit but for sure we are working on that with professional card and up Brussels yeah maybe if I may to to have two remark I think it is a very important point to to yeah to indeed promote the region I think that's a very important remark and second I think there's a difference between supply and the demand I think on the supply there are yeah view on the competences yeah then on the one hand employees on the other hand job seekers I think job seekers there there are yeah plans to to have that and yeah the view on those competence but I think regarding the employees there's there's still a lot of work to do to have those competences yeah in in image also that also are yeah the responsibilities of the employers themselves as well but I think that could have more interaction between the government than employees it wouldn't be that on the demand I think yeah there are a lot of organization working together to have that view on the future demand of which jobs are needed also international reports and I think that is different though I would I want to make thank you maybe to answer the first question at one level we we are developing a project which is called well any competence of the eight body composed by operator or or actors of professional training sector and during their mission is to to identify currents that's also future needs of labor markets and with the main you know output is to to to build a training them so that's very concrete we are developing this right now so we hope that we are able to to to soon to soon communicate about it because it's not well known I mean it's it's it's normal and I would like to so mention that it's more than to to the French speaking community that's minister Jean-Pierre Marcourt so the former minister of higher education built what we call collective structure for higher education and within those structures the companies can tell the universities or and training bodies okay we need those types of profiles right now and then the training bodies as the as the as the mission sorry to to be able to give the training to give the companies the profile they need for the question of urgency in Belgium yeah but a good point is that the regional government are quickly implemented generally and we so what I hear from today but also what I knew before is the the will to to collaborate between original governments so well even if the federal level is not implemented we are here and we are there and we want to to work together so it's a kind of good positive signal towards the abroad and I think it's very important but also the attractivity of the job territory and specifically each region is very important because we are working on attractivity towards the the companies which is as Igor said the job of minister of economics most of the time but attractivity for workers is also very important you mentioned taxes and yeah it's very important if a worker can can have a salary but for the salary is is composed of taxes maybe you will think twice before coming to to Belgium so yeah it's another aspect of attractivity we need to tackle and I think that's my personal point of view that you are right maybe the the focus is too much or not too much is currently on the companies that should be but also on the workers individually thank you I will start with the question of Igor I think too I agree there is a sense of urgency we we are with three regions it's not easy to to draft a legislation you have to negotiate with federal federal government we have to negotiate with the social partners etc but we are doing like this of course I really want to stress a thing so we are talking about economic migration today migration is a very sensitive topic it's not easy to to to draft a legislation and say hey we're going to track third country nationals to to to Flanders or to the other regions and we're going to do this and that is you have to negotiate about it you have to make migration a positive story and we're we're doing our best and that takes time of course there are other factors for third country nationals to choose for Belgium or for the region so the tax landscape is already mentioned you have the the popularity so we're university so we have Kailuva it's very popular so people want to do start to study here maybe they will stay here in Flanders and start a company or work as an employee the procedure of family reunification is also very important to stress because we want to attract talent but we also want to to to stay in them to to to build their families here so is it possible for them to bring their family here is it possible for the partner to start a company here so there are a lot of factors to take account and it's it's you have to make it a positive story so that's that's the keyword the second question of the lady yes so we have and Flanders alive a dynamic list of the strict structural shortage occupation and it exists of 20 professions and it's reviewed two years it's reviewed with the opportunity and also with the social partners so there's also the idea to review the list yearly but that has to be discussed so there is an interaction with the social partners and with the idea of course the last question about the skilled observatory centers um my uh i concentrate on economic migration of the lawyer so i do not concentrate on activating people at center but i think it's vdrb who's responsible uh to do all this we have a lot of tragics they're running we have the lifelong learning that my colleague has mentioned we have um the recognition of competences and people who do not have a diploma uh we they can start here um uh you have people who have a diploma a higher degree but we have to get the recognition by nine flanners so it takes a while so we're looking for a faster way to uh to attract those um i think i'm done thank you well let's take a last round of questions also the people that are following online they can use the chat function in the webinar in case they would want to raise questions as well maybe you would you want to react one second yeah and then throw it to the audience well i i just wanted to react to uh to Brigitte's question to miss Adam's question on the skills forecasting uh i think that every region gave examples on how they're working on skills forecasting but i lack the the future uh future forecasting in fact because what we are doing is we're analyzing the actual needs on the labor market and then we put procedures in place and then they take uh one year and a half before we're able to to react and of course the needs meanwhile already changed so i i'm sorry for for that remark but but i think i'm i'm right so i think that on a european level we should do a good skills forecasting analysis of course based on artificial intelligence not based on only people's thoughts and there we should really look into the the the further future skills uh five to ten years and then we should present those kinds of reports to draw your own specific priorities and and to put them into into place i give an example by 2027 linked to the green deal in belgium there will be it will be obliged to renovate houses so we will need a lot more civil engineers by then but we do not realize that those civil engineers will have to enroll next academic year to have their their degree by 2027 so the urgency we're not we're not always anticipating i think that on a european level we should come with an anticipation with a skills forecast that's a little faster than the than the structured bodies we we already know thank you very much evan i'm going to give the floor back to the audience now so just maybe to speed up a bit introduce yourself and maybe also indicate who are you asking the question to so that we can indeed speed up this last round of questions there were some questions on this side if we are out of time i will be short just to add to this observatory a question is that there are also local initiatives like there is this project from indirect between flamers and the holland it calls skills navigator and it's it's focused on on again the city of gandes is one of the main partners and it's focused on the port again so we are also not waiting for what is happening on on on national or regional that also also on local level to see what the the companies really do need there in that sector and secondly i just wanted to ask in this concentric model if these inactive persons are job seekers or also people that have never worked and are not registered even with fdmv because that's a big difference if you look at the the last category it will take much more than 12 to 24 months to skills them and even convince them to start taking part on and having a job so that was my question so that's why i think we have a we need a parallel circuit of next to the people that are in our country to look certainly at also the third countries okay you want to answer that or i believe hello i'm lincoln kim then for vdbe and i can answer your last question of course everybody says it we don't have enough labor force nowadays in flanders in belgium and also in in europe the shortages are coming up and at vdbe what we are doing is trying to find ways to activate people that are not registered at vdbe just like you said if you are a job seeker it's of course easier because we have all the data of such these people we can write them we can activate them because with them the possibilities they can have with this new labor market but for activating people that are not registered at vdbe that's a little bit more difficult because you have to join them you have to find them we know now because we are doing we are studying this already for more than one year we know then now that a lot of these people are eager to go to work so it's not our goal to force them to work just to motivate them to work but a lot of these people won't work but they don't know how to start with this and this is now the next point that we will try to tackle at fidium thank you we have one other question thank you very much first i would like to present myself i'm leading the in the new special envoy on migration and asylum in the federal ministry of foreign difference and for those who have known generally what so i am replacing him from first of september this year so i'm still new on the on the on the on the on the topics so i'm trying to learn and this this this kickoff meeting helps a lot on the theme of labor migration i'll say i have a few questions first one is a is a simple question of information one for example from jamila talks about 10 000 work permits but do we have a geographical distribution of of where the people come from also for the other regions if we talk about third countries at this moment what kind of countries are we talking mostly about and especially for example what what is part of africa in it which is interesting for us secondly on policy development every region is now developing its own policy on labor migration my question is how far this can be done autonomically and and then and then how far european policy is steering that so what are the margins for every region is on policy and third one is a question do you ruin it struck me that he answered one of the two problems that were mentioned to puff on uh what which were about your labor and migration the one on social security but he didn't give an answer on the remark on on everything is what is drain drain so so and that is of course in our we are also looking in our service on the whole link between migration and development and that's an important question and the question that needs an answer also i think for the future so so what are the obvious ideas on that if i if i may i i don't have all the answers of course so i'm sorry for not answering that question but i think that this um that this combination of hybrid working with a project in i'm sorry okay i think that that the link with the country of origin has to stay this could be project based of course so we discussed on it earlier why not work for a belgian employer for days and work one day on a project in your in your home country it's in fact i think that guaranteeing the proximity with your land of origin is essential both for the well-being or the prosperity of the original country and for the idea that we're not that we as a region or as a country are not stealing the brains uh there i think that from a csr level or from a from a ethical level we should take that really into account thank you and we will come back also on the brain doing question in the next session so i'm going to be uh discussed there as well maybe a question from the webinar audience law and then i go back to the to the panelists yes thank you we have a question from the colleague from besi and this is directed to to you gregory franc actually um the question is about the new regional legal frameworks that you that you mentioned if you could unveil some more specific detail and in particular and like us uh about uh the the work permit rules and whether actually this new legal framework will be aligned with the legal frameworks that are already in place in the two other regions thank you so i think now i need to flow back to the to the panel we can start with the last question and then we go through for the for the other one yeah for now we are working on the reform and we haven't had any discussion with government and and so on so it's difficult to to say what it will be um but for sure we are looking at the two other regions um we will be maybe the last region to to implement the reform at least the planters is already a few steps before us so we are looking on it but for sure we have not the same labor market and so on so it can be a difference but we will try our best as always in Brussels to align with the two other region when it's possible it's not always possible but when it's possible we want to to align with that so um but but like i said uh we want more productivity for the job shortage so we want to work on with with the list but not only with the list uh and we want to uh attract a more high profile um the idea of the the solution of planters of uh getting the the wage limits lower for young diplomas or graduate it's it's an option for example um maybe the covid crisis can change it as we see that young graduates in Brussels will be maybe the the first victim so um maybe that can change the the view the first view that we had so it's difficult to to say now what would be the the big lines of the big difference but we want to to simplify we want to to to go faster and maybe like uh in the Holland of other countries who introduce a good company level uh not to go faster because we are already going fast but maybe to reduce some uh administrative uh work for companies when we never have a problem with them uh in long term because we have i think 8 000 uh permit in Brussels it's also 90 percent of highly qualified with companies that are based here and we never have problems so maybe we can um reduce some administrative yeah for them so we will see it's difficult to say no but the vision is really to to to try to simplify to go faster and to be more attractive for high profile so the salary was one the the predictability of the the the job shortage and the needs of company can be uh another one maybe someone on the other question is the first two of to answer the first question um for i didn't remember your name but you're replacing all the people too long because i have worked with them in the past so we have delivered 8 000 work permits for highly skilled profiles um india is one of the countries i do not have the list with me so i cannot explain uh and give you all the countries but there are also some african countries like morocco um but i can provide you the list different and i think the second question um i did not get that well what was the second question between european union and the region the link with policy you are developing and the policy of european union as a whole that's what are about the margins to that so um the flemish region has supported another uh migration project in the past it's the planning project so it's about giving a chance to moroccan citizens to work here as an idea we have we are we agreed with the supporting the project but it has to be in line with the flemish policies that means that we have to get a competitive salary it's only for for the highest so to fill in the gaps for the highest your profile um but it's very important to stress that we are looking for talent so we do not want to focus on um nationality so we welcome all talents to work on our market i think to conclude maybe i think yeah the singapore the european framework is yeah you can't get anything of it but it's a base and according next to that the authorities regional level have some additional elements um that are not um yeah ruled by european government and so i think there is some margin but not the the big margin um because a lot of um the stuff is um regulated by european directives which is a binding of course um i see one more hand maybe one more question and then to conclude David let's keep this very short then um hello my name is Stefan Persman i'm a member of the i'm i'm working for acv and i'm a member of the commission of labor migration of planners we talk all the time about high-skilled people but we do have a list of 21 professions of practical skills like bunches uh or people working working in factories i mean we do even we have a shortage of low skills but in this board this is completely closed but we do have migrants here who can work who can take over what's the policy to practical skills workers in the region because that's even a more this i think you can convince the society we need high-skilled people but we also do need practical skill people there was a policy and that wants to take this one thank you for the question in malunia we developed bodies uh called uh i mean i have made a translation regional center for integration of foreign people um the desk concretely where foreign people can can present themselves and say okay i'm looking for a job or or uh somewhere to um a place to live and and then um following the the the the what they are looking for that redirected to another body so for employment which is a main topic of today um they will be redirected to the training center or to reform um and then they will be able to to to apply for a job such as a butcher or working in a factory as you mentioned um and so that's not a new policy but the effectiveness of those those centers is really important for us um and we are our role is to to to reinforce them and to give them the the the the the power or the the ability to to to redirect redirects redirects people uh the most efficiency um way and that's what we're doing here in malunia i hope i i answer your question more or less i can migration of dirt that's not what we do here yeah but i i mean country people coming in belgium uh first of all i think he's looking for a place to live sleep and then and then work um so i think those centers are really important to to add those people to to contribute to our economy to our system and to to get any opportunity to integrate them something i don't know if my colleagues want me okay but i think we're running out of time so we can also continue this question in the community of the question so thanks a lot uh dady for moderating thanks a lot to the panelists for your contributions uh very interesting um and i suggest that we immediately move to the next uh panel and i hope lanka from dna bay needs to come forward she's the moderator for the next uh panel so thank you everybody uh good almost good afternoon good meeting good noon like you say information uh like i said my name is lanka kins i'm a strategic account manager international relations at fidi and lead and in my position i have to follow up on all the migration pilot projects that fidi ab is uh dealing with i would love to introduce you rob you know rob already you saw him speaking moving but maybe you don't know the details of his life so here they are coming your background is uh in business economics and you have 17 years of hands-on experience in project management uh in february 2018 it started to become interesting for us today because then at that moment he joined the international organization for migration based in bruce as already in 2018 they told me because i didn't know uh you you started heading of course the labor and human development unit of the country office for belgium and lexember and you directly initiated the idea of setting up a labor migration scheme between africa and the european union with private sector partners tell me if it's not true what are you doing today i know it also i will tell you you are coordinating the implementation of the match project together with the project team and so kind of you are coordinating me so i leave now the floor to you and you will present the match project in detail thank you for this very beautiful introduction i think we've touched upon a lot of things already this morning you know i related to the match project so i hope i will be able to save some time i will just give you an overview of what match is about there's a lot of details and specificity but i will not go into every single detail the first slide that i wanted to show is related to the countries that are involved that we've already touched upon that the four european countries are the benelux countries in italy the north of italy in particular and the two african countries that we're working with are synegal and niteria if we then look at why did we choose these two african countries there's a number of reasons for that obviously we have one french speaking country and one english speaking country which when you look at the european countries and all could be you know handy but there's another there's a set of other criteria and i just made a short summary here of what we looked into obviously we were looking into countries with a political and economic stability for the obvious reasons you were definitely looking into countries where there's a quantitative availability of labor we talked about brain drain today the idea indeed is not to set up a brain drain and to go and you know convince people that are needed in these countries or maybe already have a job in these countries to step out of that to come to europe now we were looking at an offer you know that is abundant and we're looking at more specifically generally at younger people very often people that are not employed yet but okay this the scope was let's look for countries where there is indeed sufficient quantitative offer obviously combined with the quality of education so we want to also to have a look at you know what are universities like what are the schools like when we talk about the sectors in need on the european side and then this match you know with some of the offers that exist on the on the african side so the quality obviously was also important and then lastly the presence of strong partners and as you know we are working in the african countries with the employment agencies and so the equivalent of the video here in belgium on the african side and we are working with our i-1 offices obviously but also with private organizations that are supporting us so those elements are important for us in the assessment of the potential of the african continent and the african countries how does it work yes the match project how does it work so i think you can immediately put the entire slide so the idea is that the companies on the european side give the input give the starting point for the match project so they come to us with vacancies and we want to be really demand-driven and so we need to know what our company is looking for in terms of our profile so we also we invite the companies today please join us please come and talk to us and explain you know what your needs are in the short term but also in the medium and in that long run these vacancies are then through our network and our partners published in chinegal in ijirga and the idea there is that indeed some candidates are pre-selected so we have a selection panel in these two african countries and we will come up with a pre-selected set of candidates that match as good as possible the vacancies on the european side so we are able at this stage to tell companies we will bring you a top five you know the best matches that we found in these two african countries we will bring it to you and we can and you can then you know take it further from there look into this top five organize a recruitment maybe some testing whatever your procedures are in your company you are then free to do as you wish in terms of procedure with this top five that we can provide to you the match projects facilitate this whole process as you see we are in dialogue with the regional and national authorities we are working on the logistics and we will be training both the migrants the labor force but also the companies if they would wish wish few words on the benefits for companies you know to participate in match I think the first thing that I want to say is that the cost for companies are low so when I mentioned this top five that we can bring for every vacancy in these four european countries that is at no cost so the match project can really provide that at no cost and say look here are five individuals have a look at them and let us know whether you're interested you know in potentially hiring some of these people we are obviously looking into qualified professionals and with the scene that we have constituted today we are indeed our vision is indeed to match as much as possible the qualifications that are required from the company side we are very flexible and we are obliged a little bit due to covid to be even more flexible and creative so we say yes there is a possibility indeed to to hire some people is hiring means on the short run you can hire someone for a year for two years you can also if you wish to look into the longer term perspective and we're initially we were imagining that this would you know immediately be accompanied by the physical movement of the african talents to to europe today with covid we had to look into that and we are looking into alternatives and this could for instance be distance working so people could start working from their home in niteria or senegal for european companies we will be accompanying the companies that are that are part of the match projects also with the diversity at the workplace strategies and this is something that is important also in the private sector here in belgium in particular so we are setting up a number of trainings on intercultural competence on extra recruitment etc so all topics related to the match mobility she and then obviously we hope that through the match project the companies will also you know be enabled to discover the potential of the african labour market because africa will together maybe add here that we will be joining also the economic mission of belgium to senegal it was foreseen i believe in june this year and it's postponed now due to covid to next year so that's the the royal mission with with our princess to to senegal that we will be joining together with a number of belgium companies and i believe that for next year there's also a plan to go on a mission to to nigeria so that's really a mission where with the companies together with them we can go and look at the potential of these two african countries what is expected from the employer so that's also a question that we very often get now the audience today are not only employers so i will go through it quite rapidly we've talked about the employment conditions we've talked about the single permit we've talked about the fact that there's conditions related to the single permit with regards to salary etc so that's important to to put here we expect indeed it's a bit implicit but obviously we expect the companies to invest in human capital and so we really think that the companies should also make some time you know to train these people to bring them into their teams to integrate them etc we expect that the companies give us feedback on what is happening so once they have employed someone we have the match team we will be monitoring what is happening so we will be asking questions to the companies but also to the african talents to see like how is it going you know what about your expectations is it you know meeting your expectations are there things you know that should be improved are there interventions that we could do you know to facilitate things etc so there's a whole monitoring and assistance you know task for us included in the project and we expect the companies indeed to take some time to give us once in a while some feedback on how things are going with their african talents and then indeed i think yehoon has also mentioned it earlier we are hoping to connect these young african talents to for instance diaspora communities that are already established here in belgium so the syringali the nigerian community we are hoping to connect these newcomers that say to these communities and eventually also have them contribute to some of the initiatives that these diaspora communities are having or launching back in syringam and nigeria so as you understand we try to you know keep this link with the country of origin we try to you know have these people contribute to possibly interesting initiatives that are at the benefit of the two african countries but the overall mechanism here as well is that we are talking about job placements so in principle this would this would be fixed term contracts and it's really the the principle of the project is really that the companies and the migrants if they both agree after for instance a job placement of one year that they continue together that is obviously possible nevertheless if they do not agree to continue together then the idea is also that the african talents go back to their country of origin so the idea is not that they would all of them come to europe and stay here permanently we are convinced that a lot of them will be going back and then will you know integrate the economies of their country of origin sometimes through you know the network that they have built here sometimes working still for the company you know that has hired them but then back in the on the african country so that's also for us one of the issues when we were confronted with discussion on brain drain it's yes we need to keep this in mind and also we need to somehow connect all these dogs so that there is also a very clear return for the country of origin when these people return with increased skills with increased coability with maybe a network etc we need to monitor also what is going to happen with these people once they return and we know from previous projects and we will come to that a bit later that indeed the effect can be quite positive to conclude our team in belgium but i think you've met everybody today so jehoon was here daphne is sitting there daily was here albe is sitting there lenka we've just heard last summer is here on the slide also representing the the brussels region so these are the people that are working in belgium on this match initiative just putting them there so that you get the the full overview if you also for rich organizations they are working and then i think i conclude with just a word on the information that we have available online we have a leaflet that looks like this we have a website that is mentioned here we also have a LinkedIn page where we post the development of what is going on in the magic project so i all invite you to or go visit our website take our leaflet back home or become a member of our LinkedIn page so that you can follow up on what is actually happening within that project well i think as a summary i will leave it here i'm happy to take questions or the questions are later on yes so i give the floor back to lenka okay i invite you i don't know how do we sit shall we sit there maybe it's easier yes i think you're there it's social distancing of course france why i'm very pleased to see you for real today because we had already a short chat on the phone um i know that you are the CEO of a company called i n l can you tell me what your company is doing what are the activities are of the company oh yes i'm actually the the CEO of many companies i i've put some money in 14 different companies startup for those times some of them i had to take care of software for banks and insurance company in europe for example a plantar or axa and Belgium and we produce a whole lot of software in the data mining agency so um we have something like 100 people in the world working for us we are an extremely small company 100 is not that but uh well to mainly insurance bank and business that database business what we are so if i understand well you are you are doing the it part you are helping the banks and uh okay so that's good i heard that you are already involved in some uh projects with iom and i'm wondering why i do reasons for you to hire a third country national through a labor mobility scheme why don't you do it just like that what's the difference oh there's many many questions the difference is it was a pleasure to have people from an electric and those guys had the different views on what we are doing it was helping her to open also an office and now we have um i think 37 people in thanks to that so it was really helping her so today and also some of them were wishing to stay with us it was a bit more difficult for technical reasons so for the moment they're just working with us through the web so they're working from Tunis for the other company but it was really sort of a wake up you know situation it was a pleasure to have them they have another view on what we are doing they have a great idea for tunisia for africa so for us we win a whole lot we are as i say small companies and we saw great guys extremely young with new ideas who are willing to do billions of things extremely extremely positive guys so for us it was extremely good and thanks to them we have now a nice app in africa in tunisia so thanks also to all the teams there we succeed to do that because there was a huge work of choosing those guys in tunisia your colleagues moon nine when they were here that's and and you've up you've done a great job to succeed this business and now we are working on it but you've done way more than me so thank you so for the audience to understand so indeed has participated in a similar project in the bus between belgium and tunisia and the question i had for you for twa is when you heard about this project and the possibility indeed to hire you know some of these young african talents what was the trigger for you to say yes um this is something i want to try because a lot of people organizations companies are a bit reluctant right they think like but why should i you know hire young africans you know can i not just you know continue business as usual so my question is indeed you know you you took that step you know you took that risk if you want to try it what was the trigger that said yeah maybe i need to maybe i need to look into this right it's a question where you will have a strange answer because in fact there was absolutely no reason we are a company where we believe that we have to say yes you know and most of the people are saying no all the time i don't know if you realize that in europe we are all lady we say always saying no extremely rich old lady who say no if i have to summarize europe and we are a young company and so we say yes and so people were coming with the idea you say oh great let's try let's do it okay if it doesn't work okay we don't see you what what will happen and then we meet people were extraordinary to organize so we were extremely unstressed by doing it because initially we said what's going on seven people coming who are they what they expect from us and different people from chinese came we saw the way they were working to to choose the different guys and it was extremely professional it was invisible for a small company to reach that level so so the yes was yes yes yes let's go and then you you see something extremely right there was a new opportunity to to open something over there it was increasing the wish to go there and and so really thanks for for this job you've done but it was first why not let's go you know we don't wish to say no it's always something you miss i like it a lot that you are so open yeah i agree with you that the knowing in europe is very often the beyond the mistake yeah it's a mistake but still when you were hiring these young people from tunis you have differences maybe in knowledge maybe in competencies they have maybe another view on education and we have so how did you tackle this how did you do organize the knowledge transfer and also what did you do with the maybe the cultural differences that you encountered in your company well i'm an ict company so there's really no no difference how are you you work on ict i think i've been lucky to be in that kind of business the most the biggest difference was wine beer and water you know we were not drinking the same thing so uh in baltium it's known for beer so when you go in a muslim country you you lose a lot i don't know then remember who says that baltium has to be more known it's so you are right i think it's you sir it's so right okay we are known for nothing when you go in africa some people know beer but when you go as i say in a muslim country you're better off to to to put the chocolate but um nobody knows about and and oh and we have absolutely to succeed to say that we are the place to be for for it gets that we are a wonderful country safe country well you have any problem you have doctors medicine it's a wonderful country we have every time we say it's it's a i don't wish to go to the state i don't wish to go to my wife she's german so i have to say that i agree to go to germany but uh except that baltium in germany is so great it's a children lovely place and people when they come and visit our country they really believe it's a best place to live they're extremely happy and then most of the times they are homesick and some of them are really really helping asking to go back we had one guy who said okay me i'm homesick the weather is so so so difficult it was winter time i was snowing and uh well to this is of course the weather is so and so um most of the people thought the country is beautiful wonderful green uh you you have all the access to terrain uh airplanes you can travel for free everywhere it's it's a pleasure to be here but somebody says tax problem i really don't think it's a problem a tax problem is nothing you have so much okay you can go to the university for free you can go to so many things for free you have house problem you have somebody who's helping you and then you have to fulfill the problem you know that's why and so you pay a bit of tax but people when they wish to come to Belgium they first say uh the university are the great because i wish to go to a place where the level will be that high like that i would learn and they have questions of that one guy was asking is it far away from from uh uh disneyland because i really wish to go there so yeah no problem people would buy a train and go there buy a ticket train so the question of never tax i never heard someone saying i will not come because there's tax but one guy was wishing to go to Paris and we say you're mad you will live in a small room being a rent with huge don't go there and voila we had the pleasure to have him for a few few few weeks but um i wish to say also that talents in Africa you don't have that many you have a big big big future um uh you see all this country wish to catch them okay you have uh canada who's coming and asking people to come you have um so it's how the america you have europe you have many countries who are coming is it just fun so you don't have that many guys um for the moment whenever they're okay you can find nice nice guys but it's getting more and more complex i had a guy who went to canada i was extremely sad but he went there just for that for many reasons there was another guy asking to come or to Belgium or to France unfortunately it was not fast enough and so he went to France so it was just for a technical reason i was i was so sad that just for a technical reason because he denied the document fast enough he decided to go to two but you see it's a war it's not that easy to catch them to ask him to come um i will be delighted to work with you with those two new countries expecting that a whole lot of people will come work with us maybe go back and it will be the opportunity to have a new new office over there so i'm extremely happy to to to to to hear that you will do it again i will be with you that's neat but uh it's getting more and more complex to have this great guy so we need more publicity for Brazil we need a good chocolate to to have them with us we need a whole other thing but actually one thing is really the point maybe i'm you're not okay with me but i never heard someone saying and uh i would not come there's too many taxing but you don't know where that's a miss come on thank you so so so my understanding is correct that today you are still working with some of these people that have come to Belgium three of them in Tunis okay and one guy who is in three of them in Tunis they're great guys one is now in Canada he told me saying how can we open an office in Canada so well you know well let's think about it so we are we're nice and we had seven people and three I'm talking about highly skilled labor here so one of the questions that I also had about if you would now have to compare you know the technical skills of these people these young African talents with their equivalents in Belgium let's say yeah with someone who has the same diploma you know who has the same background how would you compare that because we always get this question like yes that you know what can these people do you know at what level can be situated most people have no experience at all with these African countries so it's a very good question I think also from a lot of companies like yeah I'm a bit reluctant because I don't know what I will get so I think it's an important question also and maybe you from your experience can answer why do you situate these people you know on that scale you know are they as skilled as their Belgian equivalents or are there any differences there ah it's again a tough one I thought you are my friends but and I'm not sure anyway but um you know when you you leave um the university here in Belgium at your level it's between zero and one hand because uh and it's really linked with my business ICT yeah you go to university you you learn a couple of things most of the time with things who are not real anymore it's theoretical stuff and then you have a couple of guys who are completely mad about software and they are great you know there are guys that you really wish because they have a level incredible level and they've learned that level not really from the universe I've noticed that those young guys who make such a big jump okay they're really leaving the family and so they have so much wish that most of the time they're close to 100 okay but most of the time it's not coming from a good university good degree because it's more after what you wish to to really spend your life for another computer you know it's extremely difficult to create something from nothing being facing at that computer by the way I'm so happy to have a real meeting I mean those guys are real I've always the zoom of things like that for the last six months so are you really real I'm happy with you so so so many people are here I'm glad to physically finally see someone I'm happy about that but so um I think they are extremely positive and education is good but it's really the fact they are dreaming the yeah the attitude so that's a very good message towards our employers of course and I'm looking at David so most of the level of education is because they are fascinated by their job yeah okay that's a very good one uh a discussion that we quite often have in Flanders is about what is best to organize circular migration which is the goal of this project for example they stay here for one year for two years and then they go back but other people are saying no it's better that they stay in Belgium that they can remain here with their families the kids are learning more language and it's traumatized to go back to their country I don't know so what is your meaning about this is it better to work with circular migration or I will tell you I would be able to tell you exactly what's going on in ten years um as much as I've seen most of the guys they were extremely young so they were not really point of family they were just coming appreciating taking few few months for few years with us they were extremely happy to do that so it's a wonderful experience for them some of them were homesick I think it's like that it's extremely difficult to know who will be and why and so um it's difficult from the first day to say this guy will stay that much and then he will go back I think it's technical but it's not practical um but as I say my wife is German my kid is speaking German we've been living in Ireland we are now in Brussels we we we have three or four languages they are they're learning Dutch they've been a bit everywhere my father was working for the European Commission we've been also a bit everywhere I'm okay you know so I don't think it's a drama to you I think it's a extremely extraordinary um um something extremely positive I've been so happy to travel everywhere with my father I hope and my kids in 20 years will be here and will value the same as far as I know they're extremely happy to have this multi multi cultural situation I come with me in Chinese if she thinks who are incredible for them so it's 14 today so as he's a young girl that's extremely open to everything and for me I'm so happy that she's joining me in those countries so I think a different no no it's definitely opening the mind of the kids and I'm hardly to try to find a planter example but I have something I want thank you guys I see we have like six seven minutes left before 12 um if you want to ask something else I would suggest that we maybe uh give the pro to the audience I see that there's also questions that may form the webinar so let me bring you the microphone so the participant would be very interested to have more details about the matches matching system as we will use in the match project so how are we going to actually select those the talent thank you yeah I can briefly just answer that question so the the the answer in one sentence is that the company will be the ones that decide on who to recruit or not to recruit so as I explained the match project will provide the five best matches according to a vacancy and then the company takes over the responsibility the company can decide not to hire anyone the company can decide to hire all five of them the company can decide to take one the company decides on the length of the job placement so it's really up to the company you know to look into their needs look into you know will these people fit the company can interview obviously these people they can make them have tests they use their standard you know recruitment processes I think yeah that's that's best and they decided at the end of that recruitment process what will be the next step right so we have the match project we are not recruiting needs to be clear that we are not the ones recruiting we are facilitating we are bringing people to the company that the actual recruitment is done by them obviously on the basis of their vacancy and the input that they give to us we will indeed work with professionals in the field to make sure that indeed these people that we will suggest are checked double checked tested etc because obviously the whole success of this project depends entirely on the quality of the matching so where we method the investing in that on the other side but the actual recruitment is taking place by the companies any other questions from the audience here or from the audience on the webinar yes thank you yes so the question is on the trading and who will be providing which training I think definitely has another question in the future just one question from from the same person saying yes that's exactly before presenting the candidates for recruitment or companies who and how are we are we going to actually pre-select the top five candidates yeah I think that's more a question for our professional partners but indeed there is a selection panel that is being set you know in the two African countries and in the panel we have the IOM local offices we have the local employment agencies of these two countries that are the equivalents of Lady Abbey and we have a private sector recruitment expert that is established also in these two countries so that knows these countries that knows the labour market over there etc and so this selection panel is the one that will be doing the selection in the pre-selection I should say in the two African countries so we can we can provide you with more technical details on that I'm not the HR expert but if there's an interest from companies on that we can definitely have a bilateral call on that to give you all the details on how this exactly works on the question on the trainings very good question because there's a number of trainings that we provide through this project a standardized training that everybody will go to is what we call the pre-departure orientation training and so actually all the people that will be hired through the match project will receive the training before they leave their country of origin before they step on the plane and within that training we are covering a whole set of things obviously we're giving a lot of information to them on Belgium on the labour market in Belgium on what to expect etc there will also be training them for instance on soft skills because we know from the past that the professional environment in which they will integrate is probably different from what they know in their country of origin and in order to avoid as much as possible problems or friction on some of these things we will prepare them as much as possible on the professional environment that is the European one in the past project in which you were part there were indeed also some issues related to the soft skills so those are more intangible skills this is not knowledge this is not technical skills these are things like the working environment teamwork punctuality deadlines you know all these concepts that we take for granted here in Belgium or in Europe just to go through all of that once again and try to prepare these people as much as possible so that's for what's the pre-departure orientation every African talent will go through that then depending on the needs so this is not standardized but this is more depending on the needs we can also accompany companies especially companies that have never worked with applicants before I think it's important that indeed we also look together with them you know and how these people are going to be integrated we have some trainings on intercultural communication we can also assist the HR teams you know with ethical recruitment trainings at IOM we have developed a very strong ethical recruitment tool and so we can provide that as well that information so but that is really on an ad hoc basis I mean the company needs that to tell us yes we want this or no we are not really interested in this because we know what we're doing and we've done this in the past so a lot of these trainings that are available there's trainings available to our partners as well I go over here the Chamber of Commerce folks they have a whole set of trainings that could be interesting but that needs to be looked into you know on a case-by-case basis I would say any other questions maybe and I really all the people who wish to to to to work with you at the ALM or something like that it's not because you're there but honestly it was extremely simple so the companies are asking themselves if they wish to do it wow we don't even have to say yes to everything but they be sure that it's extremely simple be sure that I think tomorrow it will not be feasible anymore because those people will be somewhere else be sure that I'm sure that Africa is the greatest company that we can work with that's close at the same time you can find many reasons to work with them and they have many reasons to work with us and so we when we have this moment in time that when we are able to do it well don't hesitate just go okay no risk only a great moment and interesting a link as I say my campaign now is in Africa in two different African countries and it's thanks to to to to you and that's on and we're not so really just go next don't hesitate I don't know what time it is but I think these are very very good to close the meeting yeah so thank you very much Paswa for your experience and for everything you told us and thank you for the audience for your patience and for the fact that you are here you are very brave you came to Brussels with a mask and you did it all very well I leave the floor to Rob for the very very last person thank you thank you for moderating thank you for for your testimony and I give the floor to you definitely for the concluding remarks thank you Rob I think it's been a very fruitful discussion our our discussion in the first panel has really highlighted the difficulty to actually be a Brazilian strategy to attract qualified talents we do not forget actually about your point about lower skilled workers even if of course within the framework of this project we've been talking more the highly qualified workers Loha Cojado has reminded us that Europe is not the favorite destination of his people and we really have to reflect why why is Europe still not in the in the top five destination let's say for those migrants and I think that the the answers that we got from the from the the panel show of course that there is awareness about the need to be more let's say way more proactive but I would have maybe two two elements to also put forward the forecasting of skills uh I think Jeroen Fransen has put forward a brilliant idea of having a European scheme we should really reflect on that having just fragmented systems is it might not be helpful in the long run I bear in mind of course the complexity of Belgium as a as a country but but this is a very important thing moving towards a new legal framework a more maybe a simplified also legal legal framework I think that from the different observations of the of the audience in particular entrepreneur that I have a first-hand experience I think it would be very helpful to try to have systems that are more aligned with with each other it's it's still quite of a base for companies but also for individuals to find their way in in this system the last word of course is about what we call uh in at IOM and in the match projects the win-win scenario we should never forget that we will hire young talents we will hire people that have their own expectations so what will be put in place in terms of transfer of knowledge what what will be put in place in terms of also cooperation with the home countries this is what will really make those sustainable but also really profitable for both sides so on these words I wanted to thank you for for your active contributions please do not hesitate to reach out you have our contact details now we are very happy to follow your your work to to actually engage with you concretely and share so some of our experience we will start the operational phase of the project in the coming months hopefully we have two companies interested to join us so it will be also interested to to have this conversation going on we will have other stakeholders meeting in the course of this of this project and we will keep you posted but please do follow us always our LinkedIn our LinkedIn account and on our website so thank you very much and have a lovely rest of the day just a small just a small information you should all have accepted first row an evaluation sheet if you could compile it and leave it on your desk we will then collect it and and also who came in late if you could kindly sign the attendency did you thank you else so