ILO support to a New Generation of Public Works Schemes in Greece

As part of its response to the current economic and unemployment crisis, and as agreed in the MOU between the Greek government and the EU of 19 August 2015, the Greek Government has committed to adopting: “by March 2016 a further series of guaranteed employment support schemes covering 150,000 persons, including the long term unemployed (29+), young people (16-29), and disadvantaged groups (including inter alia GMI beneficiaries) with individualised active labour market measures for participants, using local partnerships, involving the private and social economy sectors and ensuring efficient and effective use of the resources available.”. Given this context, the Government of Greece has decided to formulate a coordinated menu of policies and measures aimed at tackling unemployment taking into consideration the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of unemployment in Greece. One component, known as Kinofelis (public benefit job creation programme), falls under the scope of the Greek Government’s Operational Programme (OP) for Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning. The Thematic objective 8 of this OP is: "promoting sustainable and quality employment and supporting worker mobility," and its Investment priority 8i is: "access to employment for job seekers and economically inactive people, including the long-term unemployed and those with extended period outside the labour market, inter alia through local employment initiatives and support to workforce mobility." Therefore, the Government is starting a new generation of public works schemes, which will carry the following innovations and amendments: • The Programme will be strengthened as an active – rather than passive - labour market programme, that includes and integrates other active labour market elements (detailed below), • Greater emphasis will be placed on ensuring the productivity and the social benefit of the work undertaken by a coordinated emphasis on work performed and the assets created or services delivered, • The duration of a “work opportunity” will be extended from five to eight months. To enhance the employability of participants, the programme will aim to integrate active labour market elements such as training and job counselling in order to improve on past experiences of providing participants with pathways to sustainable employment. However, this integration of ALMPs presents an additional level of complexity for the Government and municipalities; and therefore the Government’s pilot programme will prioritise (1) job counselling and (2) vocational training in one of two horizontal fields, namely, information and communications technologies or social entrepreneurship as integral parts of the programme. In addition, during the pilot phase, alignment and synergy with additional ALMP measures will be explored, starting with those areas under the control of the MOL or of the Public Employment Services (PES, known under the Greek acronym as OAED). These active labour market measures include: • Wider support to vocational and education and training, largely administered and funded through vouchers; • Wage subsidies to encourage the private sector to hire new workers; • Job placement and counselling administered and funded by OAED; • Broader support to the social economy and to social entrepreneurship. Other active labour market measures, such as business development services, entrepreneurship development, funding and mentoring start-ups, will be investigated as areas potentially helping participants exiting the programme to transition towards sustainable employment. Even without these ties to broader Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs), the adoption of a public benefits job creation scheme is justified in terms of its employment and labour market impacts alone. By providing short-term incomes as well as useful and productive work opportunities, the programme is expected to mitigate the impacts of long-term unemployment, as

Project symbol

GRC/16/01/EUR

Admin unit

DEVINVEST

Start date

01/09/2016

End date

30/11/2017

Total allocation

687992

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

673443

Development Partners

European Commission, Structural Reform Support Service

Country/Countries

Greece

Outcomes

Formalization of the informal economy