 I'm very pleased to welcome you to this IAIA webinar. Perhaps just before we start, we might allow 30 seconds for our attendees to join and then we'll go ahead with the program. Fine, I hope most of you have managed to click into our webinar. As I say, welcome to you all again. My name is Maury Cross and this event is part of our future of the EU 27 project which is sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and is jointly organized with the European Commission representation in Ireland. And we're delighted to be joined today by the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicola Schmidt, who has been generous enough to take time out of his schedule to speak to us on the theme of social policy for a sustainable and fair recovery. And just a few practical points. Commissioner Schmidt will speak to us for about 15 minutes or so and then we will go into a question and answer with our audience. You will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. And please feel free to send your questions in written form throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once Commissioner Schmidt has finished his presentation. It would be useful if you could give us your names and affiliations attached to your questions. And a reminder that today's presentation and question and answer are both on the record. And please feel free to join using the Twitter handle at IIA. And we're also live streaming this morning's discussion. So a very warm welcome to all of you who are joining us on YouTube. Now to introduce the Commissioner to you. Dr. Nicola Schmidt, who is from Luxembourg, took office as commissioner for jobs and social rights in December 2019. And prior to this he served as a member of the European Parliament. And from 2009 to 2018, Commissioner Schmidt was Minister for Labor and Employment in the Government of Luxembourg. This appointment followed a long career in Luxembourg's public service, including roles as minister delegate for foreign affairs and immigration and permanent representative of Luxembourg to the EU Commission. As you would see from his experience, he is very well qualified for his commission post. Commissioner Schmidt was given a very significant agenda by President von der Leyen when he was appointed in December 2019. In six short months, however, he is now in the front line of leading a recovery from the corona pandemic, which hasn't gulfed us all. So Commissioner Schmidt, we look forward very much to your presentation at this most important time and the floor is yours. So again, thank you very much for this invitation. It's a great pleasure for me to be your guest speaker this morning. And I must say we are in a very special moment because we face a big challenge. How does Europe manage to come out of this crisis, which was an absolutely unpredictable crisis, quite different from the crisis we experienced a few years ago. And which impacted Ireland quite dramatically. And so it's a crisis which has affected all member states. There is no member state which has not been affected. First, from a sanitary point of view, though there are differences, the impact is not even, it's not equal. Some member states have been affected much more on that level than others. But economically and socially, the impact is huge. In terms of GDP, we have got the last forecast a few days ago, European GDP under relatively optimistic assumptions will drop by more than 7%. And unemployment will go up close to 10%. And we are coming from something like 6.7 going up again close to 10%. So this shows how deep, how sharp, and how rapid this crisis has changed our overall environment. And you mentioned that when this commission started, I was given the responsibility for jobs and social. In a meeting we had yesterday with the whole college, I said, as a job commissioner, I was in a rather favourable position. Because during the last, before the crisis, during the last month, unemployment dropped all over Europe. And we achieved, we attained the highest level ever of employed people in Europe. And from one moment to another, this picture has changed dramatically. And this is what we have to deal with now on the recovery side. Now, what has been done first? I think there are a lot of comments saying, well, Europe has not done enough for, where is Europe? First, I would say everybody in Europe has been very much surprised by the outbreak of this crisis. And it was quite at the beginning quite difficult to measure the impact and the dimension also on the health side of this crisis. I recall just that even the World Health Organization at the beginning was not sure if this would turn into a pandemic, or if it was just something quite similar to a normal flu. When then, everybody looked to China and the first information we got from China was not, were not so alarming. And then things happened quite fast. And we noticed that no country really was prepared to this kind of crisis. But then Europe reacted very fast. First, we made sure that we mobilized the funding which member states can rely on. So we adopted regulations giving member states to draw on the funds, the cohesion funds, the remaining funds, and to use it as in the best way they consider to fight the impact of the crisis. So these two regulations in the framework of a corona investment instrument were adopted very promptly and very fast. A second measure we took was to try to keep borders open. And that was not an easy task because we noticed that the first reaction of member states was to close borders. And this was really threatening the internal market because we discovered what kind of achievement we had through opening the borders or at least having the Schengen Agreement on the continent and that there were no border controls anymore. Suddenly there were border controls and we discovered what we had finally the advantage of no border controls. Here we tried to keep borders more or less open, was not totally achieved, but at least we tried to get borders open for goods and for those workers, cross-border workers who worked in very important crucial strategic, I would say, sectors like the health sector, for instance, that these people could cross the borders. So this was a second important element. The third one was in the perspective of reopening progressively and especially restarting companies and the economy. And this was a health and safety because you cannot tell people to go back to work if they have not a minimum of guarantee that this happens in a safe way. That means that people can rely on all kinds of safety measures in order not to be infected. So we issued a certain number of guidelines which should be respected in the context of health and safety. This was done by our agency in Bilbao and we really pushed for the respect and the implementation of these guidelines. Just an hour ago I had an exchange with one of the board members of Volkswagen and he told me that this was a crucial moment in order to reopen the activities in this company, really to give people the guarantee that the working place is a safe place, that the working place is not a place where people risk to be infected. So we have to continue working on this very actively. And the last point I want to mention is finally the change in the working ways because I've also seen that hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland have stopped working either because they lost their job or they are in short time. And here we just today, I got the information just now, Coropea adopted our instrument financing short time work. We have about 40 million people presently on short time work in Europe. So this is very much the case in industry, this is very much the case in a lot of services, especially also a sector which has been very much affected this tourism. Here the commission adopted communication two days ago how we can relaunch progressively also the touristic activity and I know that Ireland is quite a tourist country also relying very much on visitors, on tourists. So we have to make sure that first tourism restarts and second that people traveling get also all the guarantees that they can do that in a safe context. So here also we have to make sure that health and safety is respected. But coming back to sure so we have now an instrument giving member states the possibility to draw on 100 billion euros to finance short time schemes, which is of high importance because when we are looking to the US for instance, we had an increase by 20 million unemployed people in one or two weeks. But this didn't really happen the same way in Europe. Certainly we had an increase in unemployment then we will still have an increase in unemployment but this unemployment surge was not as dramatic as high as for instance in the US because practically all the member states use this short time work which allows them to keep their people, to keep the skills of their people and to prepare the recovery. That's my next point, the recovery. Now recovery means that certainly a lot of measures have already been taken by member states. But these measures are quite uneven. Those member states who have a lot of financial or budgetary margin well have taken measures up to four or five and even above supports to their companies and so allow their companies to survive because one of the biggest issue in this crisis is because we are facing a supply crisis and at the same time a demand crisis and the first step we have really to do is to preserve our supplies. That means we have to preserve companies because even very healthy companies are threatened because in many areas the lockdown has finally cut them off from their normal clients because people could not consume, people could not buy cars, people could not normally have their normal living and this has had a tremendous impact on many sectors, industrial sectors, service sectors. I mentioned tourism, hospitality and so the first objective was to try to save the majority of our companies because companies dying it will be even much more difficult to have a rapid and strong recovery. So this is an important point but unfortunately not every member state had the same means to do so. We have quite big differences between member states in the measures they took to support their companies. Well we opened by the way the rules of state aid so we gave the member states a large margin to support their companies because otherwise companies would not have the right to become beneficiary of state aid so we finally changed that but it was important, it's now important to come back to some level playing field because what is at stake in that context is the internal market because if you have companies who got a lot of money to support them and in other member states they do not get the same amount because the member state has not the financial margin to do so this will have an important impact on the internal market. Same thing for employment by the way and the other aspect is we have to make sure that this economic crisis is not transformed into a social crisis and here fighting unemployment is key. I mentioned short time work but we have really to take into account special vulnerable categories of people who are really suffering or risk to suffer most from this crisis and here young people youth unemployment is really an issue and I noticed that for instance in Ireland you have a very sharp surge in youth unemployment and this happens in many other countries and especially in those countries where we had already still a high level of youth unemployment so we are working on that in the framework of the recovery plan. Now what should be the recovery plan it's difficult for me at this stage to give too many and too precise indications but during the meeting we had yesterday among commissioners it was clear that the recovery plan has to be sizeable because this is also part of the credibility of Europe. It's part of making working on the level playing field which is important in social terms but especially also in economic terms so having a sizeable recovery plan coming from Europe. I won't give any figure but when we talk about sizeable we mean that it has to at least have a certain percentage of European GDP. The second one is it has to be timely so we cannot wait months before really implementing this recovery plan so because our economies are suffering unemployment is going up so we really have to implement this recovery plan in a very short term way so that's why decision now in the forthcoming weeks is so important and third it has to be well targeted it has to help companies to survive it has to really sustain a rapid relaunch of our economy we have to kickstart the economy on the supply side as well as on the on the demand side we have to make sure that people come back to their jobs that they will find back their jobs and in order to make sure that they will find a job we have to make first sure that companies survive and that companies have trust in the future because companies who do who do not have any trust in the future will not invest and will not create new jobs or even maintain the existing jobs so now targeted means also that we will not encourage our economies to come back to the pre-crisis system if we invest billions of euros we want also these billions of euros to have an impact on the transformation of our economy this commission has had two big priorities and still has two big priorities the first one is the greening of our economy climate change remains a major a major issue this has not changed due to the corona crisis climate change remains with us so greening the economy investing in reducing co2 emissions remains our priority and I think we can use this recovery plan to help companies to adapt to change and to to to green their production processes overall that's the first one so this is very important and I think through that we can also create new jobs because the green economy has different jobs but there is the possibility of major creation of jobs and the second aspect the second priority of this commission is the digital aspect so in order to make Europe to to to make Europe competitive in the global economy we have we have we really have to be leaders in the digital transformation in the technological transformation so Vice President Vestak is very much working on that but this has also consequences social consequences and consequences for for employment as I told you I I just had an exchange with one of the the biggest European car car manufacturer and what I got from them was to say well certainly there will be a big transformation in employment there will be also some jobs lost but first the the qualification the competences of our people have have to be changed so this is for for me the biggest challenge is skills so this if we want to come out of this crisis if we want to really make the transformation green and digital successful for everybody if we do not want people to leave to be left behind we have to invest a lot in skills re-skilling and upskilling and that's why we are working on a new skills agenda I want to organize also a big skills pact with the European business involving also social partners in order really to launch and to reinforce to strengthen the investment in in in skills because that's the future of jobs that's the future also for young people we we will revamp the youth guarantee and part of this re-launching or strengthening of the youth guarantee will very much rely on pushing the digital skills for young people so companies member states regions schools have to really adapt to this major technological revolution and my last point is we have to keep an eye on those who are the real victims of this crisis because still we had a high portion of people in Europe under the threat of poverty the risk of poverty we have not achieved our goals of the 2010 2020 objective reducing the number of poor people in Europe by 20 million we had started to reduce it slightly but now the crisis may have changed changed this again and therefore when I look what happens in many member states those people who have been on precarious jobs those people who have been self-employed those who have many women have lost their job in service sectors like hospitality restaurants and tourism well many of them have no income or very small income so the poverty issue in Europe has come back to a fully come back to our agenda so we have really to work on this how can we support how can we make sure that we have not a growing portion of people falling into the poverty trap and and not being able to come out so we have to start the discussion around a minimum income unfortunately some well fortunately some member states have minimum income schemes but we have to make sure that in all member states we have some kind of a minimum income framework and that's what we will do especially also on the german presidency where the germans have announced that they want to do that we have also to make sure that and that was what the president of the commission announced we have to make sure that pay still works still pays working on the minimum wage i know that in ireland the minimum wage is the second highest i think in europe so it's not ireland which is so much targeted but other member states where the minimum wages do not allow a normal uh uh live in dignity so this will go on we will still work on that and i think wages by the way of portions of our of our working force have to be reviewed we have seen that a lot of jobs which we did not consider so much or at least we did not appreciate the social value so much when we think about nurses all the people in the chairs in the care sector very often in many member states not being really paid so well i think we have to look at this differently after this crisis and therefore it's important to have new social standards in encouraging collective bargaining also for these categories of people very many uh being women because 70 percent of the whole care sector and health sector are women and very often we see that well because the sector is very female the wages are low or because the you do not know exactly the relationship with both so uh gender equality remains also a very important issue also in this crisis because women have been in those sectors the most affected and the most crucial like the health sector or the care sector or even retail sector so we have also to have a look at that uh to get uh uh gender equality accelerated therefore patron transparency for instance is a very important issue we will continue my colleague commissioner dali uh will continue on that so these are the some aspects uh how the commission will work uh are mainly on the economic and the social side for us it's very clear and that the recovery has to have a very strong social input social dimension as we consider that the social dimension under this commission had to be reinforced we have the uh the um pillar of social rights and i've been charged by the president of the commission to work on an uh implementation plan an action plan for the uh uh for the uh pillar of social rights this remains on our agenda we will present this action plan beginning of next year we are discussing with the portuguese presidency how we will push for this uh uh action plan and they have the intention to organize a summit on on the social dimension in the period of crisis and of big transitions so uh social remains as one of our priorities because we know that uh social is crucial for for the cohesion of europe for the cohesion of our societies and for the support europe has among its citizens i stop there thank you thank you very much indeed commissioner for that comprehensive overview of what the EU is doing and uh we can see um uh the commitment uh to try to deal with the this pandemic and the crisis it has called across all areas we have a number of questions um uh which um i will put to you uh the first one is from paul ginelli uh of the european anti-poverty network now i think you have spoken about poverty and how to deal with it uh much in your um in your talk but i will put you paul's question he says thank you commissioner for your presentation what measures will the EU take to ensure we do not enter a new phase of austerity policy in the wake of the crisis and particularly to ensure we do not see any increase in poverty as happened during the last crisis specifically in relation to social protection how will the EU move to ensure all member states have minimum income schemes that provide accessible and adequate supports to those who need them aleve i'll give you that question commissioner i i partially have already uh answered it but i i i fully agree that uh we have uh and i think there is a strong will of this commission not uh to copy what was done after the last crisis i think the solution certainly is not now to say well uh now we have to come out of this crisis and uh the way how to do it is austerity so i think we have uh we we have learned a lesson in a way also because there's a political dimension a very strong political dimension in that uh what to do is first the we have to make sure that the social protection is a right for everybody so social protection also for workers who are in atypical working as statutes uh the platform workers uh the those young people who are on very precarious uh working uh statutes or labor statutes uh we we have to make sure that everybody gets uh a normal social protection meaning above all also health uh health insurance so this is something we uh we have started is a recommendation adopted under the previous commission it's only a recommendation unfortunately but we have the intention to work on that and to uh adopt uh by next year uh a more uh compulsory uh framework for social protection for everybody access to social protection for everybody especially for those who are not in normal uh working uh conditions the second is uh certainly uh the emergency because a lot of people rely now on food banks which is in a way in a rich on a rich in a rich continent something which is not very normal but i've seen that in many places uh in in the even in the richer parts of europe people uh really need the food banks otherwise they cannot afford any anymore buying food for for themselves and their children so we we have to respond to this emergency and we have this instrument of uh of the uh uh this fiat fund for for the people the most deprived people so we have to to mobilize enough resources to support this but this is an emergency emergency situation this is just to help people to to uh to come more or less uh through to go through this crisis but certainly uh we have to make sure that less people rely on this uh food banks homelessness is another issue which probably will increase we have about 700 000 homeless people in europe so my uh discussion is how can we reduce this how can we really establish the right for for housing for everybody now we have good examples finland is certainly one of a good example uh with with quite the very positive results so we will organize next year a big conference with all kinds of stakeholders with uh also NGOs how we can improve our policies in the member states to reduce the numbers of homelessness and then you have mentioned it and i have mentioned it a framework for a minimum income i think we need this because crises like this we cannot exclude that they come back and uh having people who are from one day to another have no income at all we have made sure through uh short time work that uh workers maintain a certain level of their income but there are people who do not have any income who do not get any unemployment benefits and so it's important for for having this scheme and we will work on it and i hope that unfortunately it comes a bit late but that we will have all over europe a scheme and a framework for minimum income so uh my last point is yes we need uh resources and there are discussions also in in the framework of the recovery plan to mobilize enough resources to make all these policies uh uh uh at least have a strong participation of uh you in the implementation of these policies including also at a financial level thank you thank you commissioner and i think for the next question you have almost answered it but it is from Mike Allen director of advocacy advocacy focus Ireland and he refers to um Finland as you did saying every country in europe has experience rising homelessness and the that is likely to increase and he mentioned that the commission has limited confidence in this area but could play a much more active role in shaping and guiding national best practice uh and strategies and does the commissioner of any proposals in this regard i think you have mostly mentioned the proposals you have but you may have an additional comment you want to make i think we we are in a way and i think the crises are pushing has pushed us in in that direction that more people are aware of this this extreme form of social exclusion now in every city we we meet people who are just living in the streets they have no social guarantee whatsoever and they have a big health problem because they cannot just stay at home because they they do not have a home and therefore we really want to i know that the commission has not very important competences in this area but we thanks by the way to Ireland we have in the treaty this chapter on fighting social exclusion that was a request i remember very well of Ireland at that time when the treaty i think during the Amsterdam negotiation so we homelessness is a form of exclusion and we have the the possibility to better coordinate member states in their policies and also through different financial means to support these policies so this would be done we will we we are about to start it i had a two days ago an exchange with one of the NGOs which is very active on homelessness how we can proceed how we can put also in place a european framework to fight homelessness on building by building on on good experiences i mentioned the finland as one there are a few others so this is something which is on our agenda thank you thank you commissioner our next question is as from Juan Menendez Valdez who is the executive director of eurofound the EU agency based in Dublin who as we know has just produced statistics about the covid and and the views of people in member states which has been a shock i think to everybody the the feeling of hopelessness and depression that it has exposed in many areas he asks in eurofound we're collecting measures taken at national level a number of them refer to income support like basic income schemes some are suggesting a european approach to such schemes is it realistic to expect some new common action in this field he asks maybe complementing initiatives on minimum wages but i in a way i have already given also an answer i think we we uh and we will start working on the idea of a framework for minimum income in europe uh this is an important point on the program on the german presidency's program and in my discussions with the german minister uh minister heil uh they will put that on on on their agenda of their presidency and we will work together how we can really create the basis for a framework a european framework for minimum income now i am not absolutely convinced by unconditional minimum minimum income i've seen that in finland they have they had this pilot project i've read the the evaluation well there are some positive points there are some points which do not allow to conclude very clearly but what is important is that people should get the possibility if they cannot work if they are in a position where they have no income that they get a minimum income they can live in in dignity and this has this is not just a national measure this is also a measure which has to be coordinated at european level because if some countries do have this kind of minimum income and others do not have well there are also consequences of this uh of these disparities so i think it's important to work on this framework uh because this is the course of despair as uh as the director of your fund has mentioned and i have i indeed have looked at the study which has been done and we have to come out of this situation of despair of hopelessness because we cannot have a good recovery if people have no confidence in the future because people finally they are making the recovery if consumers say no i won't consume because i'm not sure if i can keep my job if i have an income if my kids have a perspective to get a job afterwards well we will go for a long stagnation in our economy with high very high unemployment so we have to restore the confidence of people as and the confidence of people depends on the confidence of companies and the confidence of companies depend also on the confidence of the consumers so i think this is the issue of the recovery plan and we have another question from allen barrett director of the economic and social research institute here in ireland and he says we used to associate EU funding with major infrastructural projects like roads is there a case that the EU should now focus on digital projects post-covid to ensure that all parts of the EU and all people are connected to strong broadband need it for work plus so much else well a very good question i think as i said we we have as one of our priorities the the the the digital development of europe and there are certainly there are technical aspects there are infrastructure aspects because not every part in europe is well connected we are now talking about five g but some regions in europe are not yet even at the level of four g so we really have first to to make sure that there is no area in europe which is cut off or which has not the right infrastructure but the second divide is the social divide we have about 40 percent of people in in the european union which have no or very very low digital competencies skills though we know that more or less 90 percent of jobs and probably more in the future so 100 percent in the future they need at least a certain level of digital skills so there is a divide also in terms of digital skills which which has a risk of exclusion because if you do not have the digital skills well it becomes more and more difficult to find a job and do and to find a job there is even a gender divide in digital skills because we notice that many women and and young young women well the digital world is a very male world so we have to make sure so here a better balance gender balance in the in the digital so what is important is now investing certainly in in infrastructure in technology but at the end it's an investment also in people investing in skills of people investing in their competencies at all levels especially also those who have a job and whose job may change be transformed with a strong digital content we have to make sure that these people have the the right competencies in the future to to keep their job and to to to be up to to this technological evolution and here Europe has to play a role I talked about the skills agenda with a very strong digital component I talked about the skills packed with business because business has also to participate in in this digital upskilling for everybody so this is one of our big priorities thank you commissioner I have another question from Tony Brown who's a founding member and a senior fellow of the institute and he has a short question but significant social policy has often been constrained by issues of competence and subsidiarity what are the implications this time well those who didn't like social dimension in Europe all always referred to well Europe does not have any competence in the social field and social should be left to the member states that's a question of subsidiarity I do not share that because this is a reading of the treaty which is certainly very limited because if you read the treaty certainly there is a social is a shared competence we have the possibility in many areas to make proposals and this was done also the previous commission has really made important proposals in the social field I mentioned even if it's only a recommendation but nevertheless on social protection posting has a very strong social component so I think nobody wants now to have the only competence in social matters for Europe it will remain a shared competence but in an internal market in a monetary union you cannot just say everything is integrated monetary policy we have a common monetary unique monetary competence we have an internal market but social that remains national I think we have to have also in the social field a level playing field that's the discussion around for instance a framework for minimum wages that's the discussion about we have to give all the employees the right to collective bargaining so trade union rights are important in that in that context the right to be reskilled is important also in that context so I think this idea that social justice is a subsidiarity issue and we have to leave it only to member states doesn't fit into the level of integration we have now in Europe I think here also we need stronger social coordination certainly but also in some areas we need regulation and we have to create a level playing field in the social area thank you thank you commissioner we have a question from Dr Laura Banbrick who's the social policy officer in ICTU which is the Irish Congress of trade unions and she goes back to referring to the the remote working and she said should remote working materialize how will the commissioner the commission ensure the advantages for workers from working from home are not overshadowed by decent work challenges or impudition yes well we have seen through this crisis the very rapid development of remote working and in a way this helped us to save a lot of jobs because people could continue working though everybody was locked down but they they could continue working now there is there is an agreement between social partners from 2007 or 2006 I don't remember exactly on remote working but that was a period where the remote working was finally very marginal very not very important and this was a is an agreement between social partners which normally had to be adopted by by all the member states and I think now with a new evolution we have to have a look how can we develop remote working but how can we also take into account the advantages but also the risks I see that in some member states just to quote France social partners will start now a discussion how to organize remote working given the risks and the advantages and I think here also we would need some kind of level playing field in in Europe and therefore I I have already mentioned that I would like to invite social partners at European level to take up the 2006 or 2007 agreement and to look what has to be changed given that technology has changed given that the dimension of remote working has now increased dramatically what can be done to give also at European level to every worker to every employee working this in this way the the guarantees and because there is one aspect like the right to disconnect friends so everybody discuss what well what is the difference between working time and and leisure time in the digital in the digital in the digital area so all these issues have to be discussed but I would like social partners to start with that and to discuss them as they did more than 10 years ago thank you commissioner the next question we have is related to the single market and it's from Peter Gunning the NIEA member and he thanks you and it says it looks like the movement of people for leisure and tourism for business and for business and for provision of services will be slow to resume and even when resumed maybe less smooth than in the past is there a concern that there may be lasting damage to the single market well I think we I mentioned already the communication we have issued on tourism transport is certainly an important issue because there are discussions now with especially the the air companies flights how to make flights safe I know that this is also something of interest for for Ireland and for Irish companies so we will have in that area the recovery will not be very fast I think because we we still have risks because the pandemic is not over and and what we are really scared of is a second wave so there is the need for taking really real precaution but at the same time we have to make sure that these sectors are not excluded from recovery so there has to be a balance between the house and safety issues and restarting all these activities moving people around traveling and also tourism in that sense free circulation is remains I spoke about the borders I think we are we we also have issued a communication on reopening borders and I think this can go faster I think closing borders is not a solution even not for fighting the pandemic but so this is something we we have to be very keen on and and to preserve the fundamental rights of the internal market and one of the fundamental rights is the free circulation of people thank you very much commissioner another question we have from Kilian Rossi the IIA economics researcher and he said thank you for your terrific presentation commissioner what does the creation of the sure instrument mean for the planned unemployment benefit reinsurance scheme announced by president von der leyen in her political guidelines well the sure instrument is a provisional measure responding to the present crisis so we managed to adopt it now in a relatively short time less than two months when the idea was launched and now as I said it was definitely adopted today but formally it will be adopted next Tuesday I think by by by the council so this is a provisional measure and it's also in in the regulation it's limited in time I think two years well it's a response to especially the development of short time work which is one of our major instruments to limit a massive increase in unemployment but that is not replacing the other instrument which is the unemployment benefit reinsurance system which should be a permanent system in terms of responding to more crisis where in one or the other country unemployment may go up due to different reasons it's more based on asymmetric shocks now we have more or less a symmetric shock even if these the consequences of the shocks is is not even in in all the member states but the the the unemployment insurance insurance reinsurance system should be more should be permanent and should respond also to needs to one or the other countries and this is in we are working on that we have taken the commitment to come up with a proposal at the end of this year and this will be respected but it's not linked to the sure instrument the sure instrument is a response to this crisis the permanent instrument should be an instrument for future unemployment crisis and especially when one or the other country is more hit than the other to help them to maintain the level of their unemployment benefits as as a social measure but also in some way as an economic stabilizer thank you commissioner I have a number of other questions and I might put put a couple of them together from Martin Martinez Navarro the legal secretary of the general court of the EU in Luxembourg and professor of law at university Lieberman de Bruxelles how will the recovery fund be financed with the emission of debt instruments by the commission itself or with other own new resources and how will the recovery fund be spent through grants or through repayable loans that's rather one to keep to keep I also from you Anna de Silva dear commissioner a lot of member countries do not have the same digital skills as other countries will this not increase the remaining problem of brain drain in Europe two rather different questions commissioner if I could meet them um commissioner uh sorry first question uh on the recovery plan it's a work in progress so I cannot be too explicit on that but certainly uh uh it will be financed largely on uh on the loans taken by the European Union but but I think we should not exclude also the create the creation of new own resources there there's an ongoing discussion on on this new own resources and I think now it's the moment really uh to make progress on that and this will be part of a package European Parliament is very much insisting on new own resources we have the uh financial transaction transaction tax we have some green taxes so I think this is now the moment to to discuss that and also to fight agreements on new own resources now grants and and loans this is in the discussion I think we need both now what is the proportion of grants what is the proportion of loans that will be the result of a difficult negotiation uh now I am convinced that we need especially also for the social aspects and the social investments we need a real important part of grants otherwise it won't work the second question the digital divide first we have to overcome the digital divide and therefore we have to support those countries where the level of digital is low so we have really to support these countries to invest more in digital education in new forms of digital training there are a lot of new approaches how we can train people more rapidly in uh in the in digital skills uh brain drain is certainly not the solution because uh we have to keep Europe together we have to make sure that we have economic convergence and social convergence so free movement is a good thing right but if uh one region or one or part of Europe loses uh the the best skill the most uh the best educated the young people the most those who want want to be entrepreneurs well we lose the uh convergence uh the economic convergence Europe absolutely needs thank you commissioner we're approaching our uh time but perhaps um with your permission we could take one more question it's quite a short one and it's from Blair Horan um who is a long history in the social area and he's an IIA member he says how ambitious will the action plan on the social pillar be I can only say very ambitious well we are talking now uh it would be a bit my conclusion a lot about resilience I think this crisis has shown us that uh we have to make sure that our our economies but also our societies are more resilient uh are more able to uh to support and to react to shocks like the one we we are now uh we we now have experience and I think resilience is also a matter of good social systems uh those countries who have managed quite well not all but because there are a few countries who have managed well where the social system are but not so but many countries have very strong health good functioning health systems so it's important to have a good functioning health system but also resilience means also good education systems low levels of poverty so I think that this action plan is part of making Europe not only fairer but also socially and in a way economically more resilient so the the the pillar of social rise have 20 has 20 principles and all of them be it the gender equality be it youth employment be it the health system be it housing all this is part of a more resilient socially but also economically resilient society so we will work on that we will have to be very ambitious not every issue is of competence of Europe but we can help member states to improve this their social situation we do that already now in the framework of the social scoreboard we do it in the framework of the country specific recommendation uh we have now adopted or integrated in our policy the principles of sustainability and a lot of these principles are also referring to social issues to social dimension and therefore I would say this action plan can have a strong impact but to have a strong impact it has to be ambitious that means it has to respond to the expectations of our citizens because I think people have high expectation that after this crisis they are not forgotten thank you thank you commissioner and I must apologize to those questioners for whom we did not reach because there was considerable interest may I thank you commissioner not only for your presentation but for the generosity of your answers and the sheer amount of information you have given us in what the commission is doing I think we can see your commitment to bring forward the means to deal with this pandemic and we can wish you well in your work in this regard and I know that you will find our our colleagues our countrymen working with you to try to get through this this dreadful pandemic thank you again commissioner and thank you to those who have been listening to us we have several more webinars next week in the IEA and we hope you'll join us for that but thank you again commissioner and our good wishes thank you very much for inviting me it was a pleasure to have these exchanges with you and all those who participated in this in this webinar thank you thank you again