European Trade Union Committee for Education

In January 2017, ETUCE has kicked off a new project focusing on social dialogue capacity building: ”European Sectoral Social Partners in Education striving for sustainable influence on European education policy building through successful social dialogue. The ESSDE capacity building project III.” The project continues the work of the sectoral social partners on the improvement of their social dialogue and towards stronger and more effective results at European level, which could better serve the member organisations at national level.

The project is conducted in consistent cooperation with the European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE) and in partnership with ETUCE member organisations from Denmark (DLF), Finland (OAJ), Ireland (IFUT), Italy (UIL Scuola), Luxembourg (SNE), Malta (MUT), Netherlands (AOb) and Portugal (FNE) for a period of two years. Representatives from these organisations constitute the Advisory Group of the project. This third social dialogue capacity building project of its kind, consists of a series of national social dialogue round table meetings in eight countries, following the successful model of the previous projects “European Sectoral Social Partners in Education promoting the potentials of their dialogue through knowledge transfer and training. The ESSDE capacity building project II” and “Promoting the potentials of the European sectoral social dialogue in education by addressing new challenges and exploring experience and knowledge”. Moving to the next stage, this project continues to focus on countries where social dialogue has been weakened due to the economic crisis and includes countries which do not need to focus on capacity building. Instead, the links between the national and European sectoral social dialogue could be increased. This new project builds upon the knowledge gained and shifts the focus on committing and improving the joint work at European level, in order to increase the strength and the effectiveness of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE) results in the long run. For this, during round table meetings, exchanges between the education social partners on topics included in the current ESSDE Work Programme will feed in and further advance the debates of the ESSDE.

The promotion of the national social dialogue and the further development of the European sectoral social dialogue have been a recurring priority and a continuous task in the ESSDE Work Programmes. ETUCE is looking forward to further contribute jointly with EFEE to the continuous development of the ESSDE for the benefit of people working in education institutions at all education levels.