European Trade Union Committee for Education

On 5 June 2015, the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE) Capacity building project II was successfully kicked off with a first round table meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus. All three Greek Cypriot ETUCE member organisations, OLTEK (Association of Teachers of Technical Education Cyprus), OELMEK (Organisation of Secondary School Teachers of Cyprus) and POED (Cyprus Greek Teachers' Organisation) gathered around the table with a delegation from the Ministry of Education and Culture. The keen involvement of the numerous participants  in the discussions and the immediate positive feedback  from the meeting indicated a high level of satisfaction with the content and the course of the event.

The European social partners in education have defined the promotion of their social dialogue as one of the main objectives within their current work programme for the years 2014 and 2015. This goal had also been defined as a continuous task in the previous ESSDE work programme. The adherence to this task shows that the social partners recognise the importance of a well-established social dialogue and that its further improvement takes a high priority for them. Strengthening the ESSDE's capacities by improving its structures and contents but also by increasing the delegates' commitment seems essential to make it as efficient and effective as possible. In order to attain this objective, more effort and work is now being invested in this process through round table meetings involving the national member organisations.

Against this background, the meeting's objective was again to increase the national social partners' knowledge about the European and national sectoral and cross-sectoral social dialogue and other related issues. The presentations aimed to provide specialist know-how on topics related to the social dialogue such as on the development of the European social policy, industrial relation systems at national and European level, the objectives and functioning of the European sectoral social dialogue, the need of tighter network creation between social dialogue delegates, the ESSDE work programme and  achievements. Participants also acquired deeper knowledge of cross-sectoral issues such as the impact of the economic crisis on EU level social dialogue, the challenges of the demographic changes in Europe, the Europe 2020 strategy for growth, the European Employment Strategy and others. ETUCE raised participants' awareness about recent developments with regard to the EC's initiative to re-launch the social dialogue http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=88&langId=en&furtherEvents=yes&eventsId=1028 and the EC's better regulation agenda http://ec.europa.eu/smart-regulation/index_en.htm.

However, the clear key focus was on possible ways to strengthen the links between the national and the European level social dialogue. Stefanos Savva, OLTEK President and project partner, underlined that it has been problematic as many changes around the education sector had taken place during one of the economically most difficult periods. At the same time, social dialogue has come under severe pressure. Therefore, both sides were convinced about the importance of strengthening social dialogue and the future cooperation between the committed social partners of Cyprus.

ETUCE and the European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE) prepared and conducted this meeting together. Both organisations expressed great satisfaction over the lively and constructive debates at the meeting. The Cypriot education social partners have actively and regularly contributed to European social dialogue activities since the launch of the ESSDE in June 2010. In the context of the current joint project, seven more meetings are planned and will take place during the next months in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Spain and Serbia.