What changed between the draft committee report of 6 Feb 2024 and the draft committee report of 20 Dec 2024

The European Union and its Member States face labour shortages in a wide range of sectors, from construction and healthcare to engineering and information and communications technology. The labour shortage is likely to exacerbate in the coming years due to demographic trends, while Europe is competing globally for talent with other continents and individual countries. The mismatch of skills on the European labour market is also causing economic losses of up to 2% of annual productivity. Simultaneously, more legal pathways are needed to prevent irregular migration. As migration is a natural phenomenon that will continue to exist inter alia due to climate change and international developments, a common European approach to legal labour migration is crucial.

It is thus evident that Europe, in order to uphold its competitiveness and foster economic growth, must remain open to the world. Europe needs to attract all types of skills levels that are directly and indirectly needed for the green and digital transition, for the continued quality of our welfare systems and for the prosperity of our continent. At the same time, as Europe does not exist in a vacuum, it is also clear that strong and sustainable partnerships with third countries are essential. Talent Partnerships can help contributing to skills development and good working conditions in third countries, while promoting circular migration as a means to prevent brain drain.

However, for the actual matching between employers and third country nationals to take place in a more efficient way, the EU Talent Pool is established. It is a welcomed proposal and has been requested by the European Parliament in several legislative reports. The EU Talent Pool will be the first EU-wide platform to facilitate matching between third country nationals and employers established in the Union. It will draw inspiration from EURES, the existing platform where EU citizens and employers can match, but will also go beyond. It will complement existing measures and initiatives and thus not interfere with the competence of individual Member States, for example regarding the right to determine volumes of admission of third country nationals coming to work.

In contrast to the proposal of the European Commission, the draft report foresees that all Member States implement the EU Talent Pool. Since the labour shortage is a Union-wide problem and the EU Talent Pool aims to be a common platform to unite third country nationals and European employers, it should exist in all Member States to improve predictability, transparency and legal certainty for everyone using it. It will still remain voluntary for employers and third country nationals to go through to the EU Talent Pool when seeking opportunities, but a common European implementation will facilitate access to the platform. It will also contribute to solving one of the main challenges of labour migration policies in Europe today: fragmentation.

The draft report further builds on the proposal of the European Commission by strengthening the two major building blocks of the EU Talent Pool. Firstly, it strengthens protection against discrimination and unfair recruitment of third country nationals by aligning the EU Talent Pool more closely with the General Principles General Principles and Operational Guidelines on Fair Recruitment developed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). By doing so, it also aims to fill a gap in the European legislative framework where thus far no common rules on recruitment procedures exist. Secondly, it enhances the EU Talent Pool’s connection with labour market development and thus the actual needs of European employers, by involving social partners and other stakeholders more clearly in the governance of the EU Talent Pool.

For both these building blocks, information is key. Therefore, the information and support service provisions have been clarified and strengthened. The draft report distinguishes between which information should be publicly available to all (prospective) third country nationals and employers, and which information should be granted to a third country national after having matched with an employer. Besides information, accessibility is crucial to ensure equal access to the platform for all users. The draft report introduces accessibility requirements for the whole EU Talent Pool, including the information on protection of data as well as the information provided on the actual platform.

The draft report also introduces proportional conditions for participation on the EU Talent Pool. Employers should provide information which can be verified by National Contact Points before they are allowed to post vacancies on the platform. This information includes for example a criminal record check of the natural person(s) in charge of the company, to prevent abusive employers from reappearing on the platform. The draft report introduces provisions whereby an employer can be temporarily suspended in the case of purely administrative misconduct, but also indefinitely suspended in case of breaches against applicable legislation on antitrafficking and sanctions against employers of illegally staying third-country nationals.

Simultaneously, the draft report maintains certain proportionality provisions for third country nationals, whereby a person subject to a judicial or administrative decision refusing the entry or stay in a Member State or an entry ban to the Union will not be allowed to register given that they will not be permitted to enter and stay in the Union for the time being. This provision is however balanced by allowing third country nationals to lodge a new request for registering after the expiration of their entry ban, while safeguarding that persons convicted for offences constituting or involving threat to the national security of a Member State never are able to register on the EU Talent Pool.

Lastly, as the EU Talent Pool will build on automated matching systems enabled by AI to find the most suitable skills for a certain vacancy, it is important to ensure safeguards against biases on discriminatory grounds.