If it were regarded as an “enterprise”, POSDRU – the EU human resources programme would be the biggest new employer: 20,000 people teaching staff, 500 million euros a year in salary payments.
Silvia Suciu (50), Florentina Baciu (48), Sorin Morega (47),
Adelin Niculae (23) and Ana I. (56) were yesterday gathered in a
room on the second floor of Cotroceni Business Center office
complex, paying attention to what Ruxandra Grou was telling them
about how to turn a computer on and off.
They are unemployed since last year, but have not managed to get a
job yet, so they take free classes, paid for with European
money.
There are a further 15-30,000 unemployed around Romania, women,
young faculty graduates and PhD students, who take free daily
classes financed with EU money in order to improve or certify
certain skills. These are EU funds coming through the so-called
POSDRU programme (Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources
Development), which has so far attracted the biggest EU funds, and
which generated the toughest competition. But few know that this
programme is currently the biggest new “employer” on the market,
five times bigger than Nokia, for instance, which created 4,000
jobs in Cluj.
If you look at it as a huge company, the EU financing programme for
human resources is a giant provider of training, with a 4.25
billion-euro turnover (the entire value of the programme until
2013), 20,000 employees (trainers, consultants, project managers
and assistants) who conduct 2,000 training programmes and with an
extensive range of clients – from unemployed, women, people with
disabilities, to top-ranking bankers who want to undergo leadership
training.