Now, the European Commission will today unveil a plan to future proof what it's calling quality jobs as Europe continues to face challenges over competitiveness, building up its defenses and the global AI race. But how does the roadmap balance protecting workers with the EU's drive to cut red tape, a key component of the Draggy and Letter recommendations for
keeping the EU competitive in the future. Joining me now to discuss is Roxanne Manzata, who's Executive Vice President of the European Commission with responsibility for Social Rights, skills and Jobs. Good morning, great to have you rad this good morning in studio. What's this plan about.
It's about balancing competitiveness and social rights. You are spot on because, as Dragui said, there is no competitiveness without quality employment without quality jobs, and many of the shortages that we see in many sectors are about the working conditions. But it's not just about the current types of employment that we see.
It's also about the future of work.
And you've mentioned AI algorithm management, which is not going to change many types of jobs and skill sets, but it does change labor relations, workers relations with their bosses, money. We have AI as an assistant is one discussion. When you're looking at AI as a boss, because we have algorithms that sometimes manage activities or assess activities.
Then it's a different story.
So what the Commission is doing is on the one side, investing, pushing on innovation in AI, pushing on deployment and diffusion of AI in Europe, and this is extremely important.
But in order to have this diffusion and uptake of AI.
Throughout our industries in all company contexts, smaller or large, we need to create trustworthy environments for workers and for employers alike, so the quality jobs will look and we'll ask this question, do we have enough protections for workers when the algorithm is in charge or do we need to create a framework that enables this kind of this kind of work environment. And I need to mention this today we'll also launch this first phase Consultation.
For Potential Quality Jobs Act.
So it's not just a strategy that we launch today unemployment, but it's also asking social partners what we need to do in the sense of.
Legislation. Legislative initiative.
But when you're talking about new rules, businesses are going to be wary about what exactly that's going to mean for their competitiveness. If you're adding to a regulatory burden, how do you respond to the call from unions, for example, to put rules in place but also balance that with compassitiveness.
Look, no, no, the idea is not to create more burden for companies. We need to keep them agile. We will look at gaps. So gaps mean where we have no types of frameworks, end of regulatory setups, and whether these gaps need to be filled or not. It will be the result of these consultations with the social partners.
But this is clear and I.
Work very closely with the Executive Vice President for Technology in the Commission, with Henna Virkunen. We are working together, not in silos. So obviously everything will be carefully balanced so that any type of outputs of these Quality Jobs Act is not creating burden or any type of negative
influence on companies. But we cannot forget about people, about workers, because it's them in the end that need also to deliver competitiveness and they need also to benefit from the prosperity that we want.
To share in Europe.
How worried are you about the kind of broader signals of that sense to companies that might want to invest or hire in the European Union as well, because the narrative is often that the U is just adding rules and red tape. So it's a difficult message to send without it being interpreted as it's going to be more difficult and perhaps drive jobs away from Europe.
But look, we are already doing a lot on simplification and that's not looking. We're not talking about labor rights, but we're talking about many overlaps or regulatory burdens that needed to be made easier and simple for companies. But on the other side, is Europe ready or willing to go in a direction where it says, uh that workers and people that deliver for competitiveness need to be put on the third place, on to be left outside of the discussion.
I mean, this is the big, the big question.
Algorithm, do you want human oversight.
That when a human centric, human centric is Europe human? Europe has set the standards with the AI Act, with safety and security in the workplaces and with this approach of being human centric, but we need to find ways to do it so that it makes sense, it's progmatic, it doesn't create for companies.
As I said, pressures.
But at the same time, you cannot treat people as a machine. They are in the end, the final end of our quest for competitiveness. So that's that's why we need to be to balance UH workers rights and workers health and safety, UH, their privacy, UH, everything that is related to that, and the productivity that we need by using AI and by using technology.
So both need to find.
We need to find the right balance and to strike the right balance so that we keep our European social model but also make European industries more agile. And when we say simplification, I do not think we say the regulation because if we say that Europe is not competitive because people have too many rights, then I would say this is very dangerous. I do not agree with that.
Simplification means looking at reports, looking at bureaucracy, looking at how they make sense, how it can digitalize, or whether they're overlapping, and then taking action. It's not about saying, you know, you have to forego some rights. You have to really be loosening.
There'll be no weakening of workers' rights through simplification.
Cannot be. It cannot be.
And I tell you this is part of our social fiber of our social.
Cohesion in the Union.
Think that the European Union is a promise for a better life for the people that you the union is that conversation.
Is that being heard within the European Commission, because we hear the message coming, you know, very strongly. For example, on climate rules, we're easing of the burden and pushing back climate deadline seems to be the key part of the simplification effort.
There no obviously, I'm talking here about labor rights and social rights, and this is quite clear that we cannot deregulate. What is simplification can never be about giving up people's rights at the same time, not just on environment, but also on digital Indeed, we are finding ways, but they have to be fit for purpose, so that we allow space.
And time for companies, for industries to.
Do these transitions in a way that is as efficient and optimal as posible.
Can that help workers who are being displaced by AI. We have the example of Klarna, for example, firing hundreds of workers to replace them with AI and having to rehire them.
We're working with the budgets that we have at European level, first of all, on the proposal for the next budget I have seek fuewored with my colleagues proposal that we have direct investment in people of minimum fourteen percent. That
would mean support for reskilling, up skilling includingly. I want to mention another tool that we're piloting right now, this European Skills Guarantee for workers, which is also about reskilling and up skilling workers when they need to change their skill abilities to work with AI or to transition to a different kind of job because of AI or orbanization or automation impact.
So we are creating
These tools so that we support people in these transitions