Dear participants,

 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to address you today.

I am grateful to the OECD Crete Centre on Population Dynamics for holding this conference.

Demographic trends are a horizontal challenge.

With profound implications on our societies:

They lead to a need for higher capacity and more people in medical and long-term care.

They put considerable pressure on the sustainability of our pension systems.

And they intensify labour shortages and impact our competitiveness.

We are putting a particular focus on competitiveness in this Commission - in line with the Draghi report.

For the active working population, we want to encourage and support Member States to tackle the skills gaps.

It will drive investment in life-long learning and skills retention.

We also need to invest in the basic skills of our youth for tomorrows labour markets.

We have adopted a new European Union STEM plan for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Further, we need to increase the labour-market participation for women across the board.

More than 7 million women are outside the labour market in the European Union, mostly because they are busy with informal care of children or an elderly family member.

We need to remove the barriers through flexible working-time models, better access to paid care, and quality child-care.

And where we cannot fill labour shortages domestically, we will continue to draw on legal labour migration.

 

At the same time, however, we would ideally increase our fertility rate.

It is at a new historic low of 1.35 births per woman on average in the European Union.  And here in Greece, it stands at 1.26.

Career opportunities often coincide with the period when couples are planning to have children.

People should have a choice.

When they opt for taking time to look after their children, we should promote flexible or part-time working models.

We also need to provide quality childcare to avoid “either-or” decisions.

And we need to tackle housing. Families cannot settle down and grow, if there is no sufficient housing or if it is not affordable.

At the European Commission, we are implementing our Demography Toolbox.

Reconciling family aspirations and paid work is one of the pillars.  Healthy ageing is another priority.

And still this year, we will present an Affordable Housing Plan and a legal initiative on short-term rentals online.

 

Managing the demographic transition goes to the very heart of our social fabric.

Thank you for your expert contributions.

I wish you a productive and inspiring debate.