The Employer Tailored Chain Cooperation (ETCC) project, which is backed by the European Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), aims to facilitate the employment of applicants for international protection (hereinafter 'applicants') and refugees. The project aims to bring employers, supporting organisations and jobseekers into contact with each other. No less than seven EU Member States are throwing their weight behind the project.

The partner organisations from the seven Member States (Forem (Belgium), CCI WAPI (Belgium), COA (the Netherlands), ISIS (Germany), Pôle Emploi (France), IFOA (Italy), Manpower (Italy), ACH (United Kingdom), the Cyprus R Council (Cyprus) and Eurochambers (EU)) are trying to tackle the employment problem of applicants and refugees in a structurally different way. These partners come from different fields: employers and employment organisations, reception and asylum & migration.

The project comprises four steps:

• Screening the skills of applicants for international protection and examining the needs of employers (e.g. bottleneck professions).
• Bridging the gap between employers and job-seeking applicants or refugees by raising employers' awareness about the importance of employment for this target group, among other things by means of specific training courses.
• This is followed by matching supply & demand. For example, it is investigated how the different Member States can efficiently organise a job fair.
• Finally, a lot of attention is paid to sustainable employment. For example, it examines the support which applicants for international protection need in order to continue working or ways employers can find answers to their questions afterwards, for example about employment contracts.

The ETCC project aims to achieve operational guidelines that are applicable across the EU. Accordingly, upon completion of the project, there will be various manuals and training courses available which the EU Member States can apply in their own local context. These results will be presented at a final conference at the end of 2020.

Questions? nelle.lauwerysen@fedasil.be