Well, this is perhaps not very informative, but for those of us who make up the EURES Spain network, it is quite emotional. In this year 2024, the EURES network celebrates 30 years of working to make effective our vision of Europe as your workspace and our mission to provide the best possible mobility services to companies and people looking for opportunities in other European countries.
These kinds of anniversaries allow us to stop and look back, at least for a moment, to remember colleagues who are no longer with us, to think about all those people whose lives have been changed for the better by the experience of working in another European country, and to realize how much everything has changed.
Talking to some of our colleagues who were present at the launching of the network, we found a time when CVs arrived at our desks by snail mail and the most immediate communication was by phone or fax. Information accumulated on shelves full of booklets, brochures and handbooks on living and working conditions in other EU countries, which we tried to update every time we went to a meeting or event in another country.
Before the launch of the EURES network, in which a Spaniard, Joan Cornet Prat, then Head of Unit in the Directorate General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs of the European Commission, was a key player, there was a fragile platform for the exchange of job offers called SEDOC, provided for in Regulation 1612/68, which at that time regulated the free movement of workers, a basic principle of the European Communities, already included in Article 48 of the Treaty of Rome. The creation of EURES and its implementation meant a revolution in services related to work mobility and services to the citizens of the European Union: EURES advisers were (we already are) «real» people who could be visited, consulted, and dealt with directly, distributed throughout the territory of a European Union made up at that time of 15 members, three of whom (Sweden, Finland and Austria) had just joined the European Union.
communications were by telephone, fax, post, newsletters were paper… The truth is that we don’t realise how everything has changed until you do an exercise like this one, looking back, without nostalgia, but with a lot of affection.
To think of something as almost everyday nowadays as European Online Jobday was simply science fiction; in fact, on more than one occasion, we had sometimes difficulties to access to something as commonplace as the Internet. We needed to explain our bosses that Internet was important.
On the other hand, the European Union in which EURES appears was something quite different from today’s Europe. Just 20 years ago, by the way, the EU (and with it, EURES) faced its major enlargement. 1 May 2024 will also mark the 20th anniversary of the enlargement of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe, Cyprus and Malta. On that date, ten new countries and around 75 million inhabitants joined the European Union. This expansion was called the «big bang» when the EU grew from fifteen to twenty-five member states.
Along the way, milestones such as the EURES Mobility Portal, the EURES Regulation, the development of the ESCO taxonomy, EUROPASS, the EURES national websites, the emergence of our social media, the launch of the European Labour Authority, ELA, etc.
As our colleague Covadonga López, who has lived through this whole process from the beginning, says, «We are a magnificent experiment that was born from the very spirit of the Treaty of Rome. We are an example of generosity in sharing. We are a very varied and changing group that for 30 years has maintained the tone of networking, of collaboration between strangers, and of people who move a project through the most varied obstacles.
And I think we should tell about it and celebrate it».
But looking back should only serve to celebrate what we have achieved (just for a little while) and to get ready for what the immediate future holds for us in these times in which change is the norm. If there is one thing we have learned in EURES, it is that it is essential to be flexible, to take advantage of emerging technologies, to change perspective if necessary, to be useful, which is what it is all about in the end.
Because in the end, the protagonists of EURES throughout these years have been and continue to be the people and companies who took up the challenge, who dared to broaden their horizons beyond the local space and who made the European labour market a reality. Here are the stories of some of them.
These stories are the water that refreshes us and drives us to realise the vision and mission of EURES.
And our plan is to keep at it, trying to improve every day, learning from our clients, from our colleagues & friends in the EURES network all over Europe, and from the companies that accompany us in this adventure. Happy 30th Anniversary! #EURES30
EL BLOG DE EURES ESPAÑA 