On 20 February 2014 ETUCE held its first out of six roundtable meetings within its new project “Promoting the potentials of the European sectoral social dialogue in education by addressing new challenges and exploring experience and knowledge”.
The meeting was carried out in Bucharest together with ETUCE’s affiliate and project partner in Romania, the Free Trade Union Federation in Education (FSLE). It took place in the Palace of the Parliament and gathered a large number of participants from ETUCE’s Romanian member organisations as well as representatives from the government. Mr. Remus Pricopie, Minister of National Education, and other speakers, including Christian Welz from Eurofound and Stefaan Ceuppens from the European Commission, contributed to the success of the meeting.
As foreseen, the meeting gave participants the opportunity to highlight key messages, which ETUCE will integrate in its new project on promoting the potentials of the European sectoral social dialogue in education by addressing new challenges and exploring experience and knowledge. The topic of these six round table meetings will therefore concern social dialogue with a specific focus on how to strengthen and highlight the potentials of social dialogue in EU member states and at EU level. The meeting in Bucharest revealed a deep concern of the status quo of social dialogue as well as on general developments within the education sector in Romania. The lively discussion among participants made clear that it is an important moment to raise attention towards this topic. It is expected that the upcoming meetings and the overall outcome of the project will generate solutions to the current challenges the social dialogue is facing all over Europe.