Seminars

IDELE seminars

As a core part of the IDELE process twelve international seminars brought together best practice case examples from across the EU. Each IDELE seminar was a conversation between around 30 policy makers and practitioners from local, regional, national and EU level, based on a particular theme and/or geographical area. The seminars included expert presentations as well as case examples and offered the opportunity to debate and discuss the lessons emerging. They were primarily a means to an end: ECOTEC then reported the findings to the Commission and disseminated them across Europe.

Each IDELE seminar comprised:

Plenary sessions: presentations from high-level experts offering an overview of the theme and presentations of current experience from across Europe.
Workshops: two pairs of parallel discussion workshops (four in all): each workshop features one or two presentations from case study examples and the presentations are followed by 'peer review', i.e. debate and discussion on lessons learned.
Panel session: feedback from selected delegates on the lessons learned from the presentations, debate and the seminar as a whole.
Open debate and closing remarks
Full thematic reports and summaries of the thematic reports produced afterwards by ECOTEC, circulated to all participants and disseminated via the IDELE Web site and policy brief meetings.

The seminars evolved over three years into a unique and effective "conversational" format bringing together the views of a wide range of stakeholders, exploring complex and often controversial issues about local employment development. IDELE highlighted the fact that the only way to improve efficiency and effectiveness of local actions in the face of such a contextual variety is by conversation and shared learning and by benchmarking where some general idea of "like-for-like" is identified through these conversations. By informed and structured conversations and a regular process of "open co-ordination", the actors involved in local approaches learned how to best navigate the complexities of the policy environment.

Seminars in 2004

The first four seminars were held in 2004:

1. Lille, France, 2 July 2004: New business creation and added value of local employment development in old industrial and mining areas.
2. Berlin, Germany, 16 July 2004: Integrate immigrant and minority ethnic groups in the labour market.
3. Rovaniemi, Sweden, 16 September 2004: Stimulating and managing new firm creation and entrepreneurship through local action in remote rural areas with dispersed populations.
4. Cork, Ireland, 8 October 2004: Local employment development in the context of the Lisbon Strategy.

Seminars in 2005

Another four seminars were held in 2005 on the following themes:

5. Thessaloniki, Greece, 21–22 April 2005: Maximising employment potential: local approaches to lifelong learning.
6. Faro, Portugal, 12–13 May 2005: Connecting the local: linking local employment and economic development into national and regional governance systems.
7. Nice, France, 9–10 June 2005: Funding the long term: mainstreaming and sustainable finance for local employment development.
8. Copenhagen, Denmark, 7–9 July 2005: Cross-border and transnational co-operation for local employment development.

Seminars in 2006

9. Budapest. Hungary, 9–10 March 2006: The new round of structural and cohesion funds: bringing the local into play in the context of convergence.
10. Bologna, Italy, 27–28 April 2006: Fresh approaches to employment activation and sustainable communities: lessons for the competiveness and employment regions.
11. Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1–2 June 2006: Sustainable rural communities: local approaches to job generation and learning and skills development.
12. Brussels, Belgium, 13–14 July 2006: The local and the European employment strategy: Lessons from IDELE.

Thematic reports