We had a very dense discussion this morning with a multitude of subjects, so I will choose a few and report on those. Indeed, we started the day with a very good discussion about Europe's economic competitiveness. And here, I would report on four different strands.
First, it is so important to continue to build on our strengths – and we have many strengths. In other words, we have to focus on the areas where we already have a competitive edge, or where we could take the lead. And for this, our industrial and our energy policies are putting us on the right path. You are familiar with the elements. For example, the Net-Zero Industry Act or the Critical Raw Materials Act. But also now the reform of the electricity market is important to drive the production of renewables up, and thus the energy prices down. And I very much welcome the agreement that we have found this week in Council, so now we can proceed with that reform. And there is the platform, that we called STEP, for strategic investments – part of our proposed revised EU budget. STEP is the fund that we want to create to step up investments in emerging and strategic technologies. And I hope that all these proposals will be adopted soon so that we can kind of start our economic future right now.
My second point is different: Of course, as important as technologies are, so are the people, to work with these technologies. This is something we have also discussed on Wednesday afternoon at the Tripartite Summit. What we need to do – because it is developing more and more into a bottleneck for our economy – is to look at the labour market and the lack of skilled labour or even labour. So the shortages have to be addressed and – we discussed that – we have to tap into the existing potential, and improve the situation. We have a record-low unemployment rate of 6%. But if we look at the different elements of the labour market, we see that we have a much higher youth unemployment. So this is the first task to address.
Then, we see that the female participation is way lower, 12 percentage points lower, than the male participation in the workforce. So here, we have to engage in the important topic of creating the infrastructure to reconcile work and family, like kindergarten and good schools, but also, of course, have reconciliation of work and family in the companies.
The third element, where there is a lot of untapped potential, is the older workers.
And the fourth element we discussed is legal migration. We had last year 3.7 million legal migrants coming to our labour market – and this is very good, and we need more of this. The discussion we have on migration is on the 300,000 or 400,000 irregular migrants. And I will report on this one later. But legal migration is important for our Union, and we will need more of this.
Finally, my third point for the topic of competitiveness. Of course, we have to do our homework in the European Union itself. But we also have to make sure that we have a level playing field globally for our companies. And we have in this context again discussed the Inflation Reduction Act. The immediate macro-economic impact, at the moment being, is minor. But if you look at the sectorial implications, they are measurable. So we need to stay very vigilant, especially when we come now into the phase where we do have the whole legislative framework for the European Green Deal in place.
But now it goes into implementation. And the path to implementation is via guidelines. We have to shape the guidelines now. And to make sure that the clean-tech industries have a competitive advantage in the European Union, it is important that we now listen to them and hear what is crucial for them when we implement the legislation. These are the so-called clean-tech dialogues that we have with our industry. So we go sector by sector to identify where we can support our industry. This big work and more about it should not distract us from the much greater impact of unfair practices that we see by China – also, a part of the discussion.
And I want to conclude with the fact that: Yes, we need a strong economic base to build our future competitiveness. It is a challenge. But what we also need are fiscal rules that can match that challenge. Because sound public finances open the space for more investment. And we should press ahead with the adoption now of our proposed new rules for the European economic governance. Here, I welcome that the Spanish Presidency is working intensively and tirelessly on this matter.
Indeed, at the end of this discussion, we took the opportunity to congratulate Greece for the extraordinary progress it has made over the past years. Regaining investment grade is a significant milestone. And we pay tribute to the Greek people who have made enormous sacrifices but have every reason to feel good. They have been incredibly resilient. Still, a lot remains to be done, but I am confident that Greece will continue on the path of sustainable and inclusive growth.
Now, let me turn to Ukraine. It was very clear in the debate that, despite the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, our focus continues to be on supporting Ukraine. This is why I very much welcome that you invited, yesterday, President Zelenskyy to speak to us via VTC. We will continue delivering the much-needed weapons and ammunition. We will continue providing the much-needed financial relief. Just a figure: Altogether, if you look at Team Europe, we have provided almost EUR 83 billion of assistance to Ukraine. Now, looking forward, the next step is the adoption of the EUR 50 billion Ukraine Facility, because Ukraine needs reliable and predictable financial support. Of course, we will also continue to support Ukraine as it walks the path leading to accession. We will provide our assessment, as you know, on such progress at the beginning of November.
A final word on sanctions. We are in the process of preparing the 12th package of sanctions. We are now in consultation with the Member States. In particular, we are looking into how to cut the remaining revenues that Russia draws from the export of diamonds to Europe and its partners. This would be done in very close cooperation with our G7 partners. And we continue to make sure that our existing sanctions are properly implemented and effectively enforced.
A last point on the immobilised assets of Russia in the European Union. This was also a point of discussion. We all recall that, in March last year, we took collectively the important political decision to immobilise Russian sovereign assets. The value of these sovereign assets stands at EUR 211 billion. And politically, we agreed that ultimately Russia must pay for the long-term reconstruction of Ukraine. We had a recent discussion of Finance Ministers in Marrakesh that allowed good progress on the basic principles. So, the next step would then be an actual proposal. We are currently working on a proposal to initially focus on the so-called windfall profits. In other words, we will present a proposal to find a way how to use the proceeds from those assets that are currently benefitting a limited number of financial institutions in the European Union. These windfall profits are already quite substantial. And the idea is to pool them and then channel them through the EU budget 'en bloc' to Ukraine and for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
On migration, there was a strong support for the letter I sent to the Leaders. And I will not reflect on the details of the letter, but on the main message. The main message is that we are making good progress on the two-track approach. On the one hand, it is the legislative track. Here, the discussions on the different pieces of legislation under the Migration and Asylum Pact are advancing well. I would like to thank the Council and the Parliament for this and for all their efforts. And now we must keep up the momentum because we have to adopt this Pact. The other track is the operational work. We are making good progress on the implementation of the 15 priority actions that we discussed in January. We have taken action to address the immediate situation along the different migratory routes that we have. And we have worked on advancing our cooperation with partner countries. This is also now the principle in moving forward.
So first of all, we will focus on preventing irregular departures. For this, we have to increase the capacity of the neighbouring countries for border surveillance and search and rescue. Then we need more outreach to countries of origin and transit. For this purpose, we need to build much more comprehensive and mutually beneficial partnership agreements. As we have discussed, for example, yesterday with Egypt.
Then there is the important topic, which is that we have to crack down on the smugglers and traffickers. In this context, we will present legislative proposals to fight smugglers and traffickers, by the end of November. The legislation that we have in place is 20 years old. So it is high time to update it. And we will reinforce our cooperation with the UN agencies, mostly UNODC. On top, we will soon host an international conference to launch a Global Alliance with a Call to Action against smugglers. To whomever you speak, whether it is a country of origin or a country of transit or a country where the debate on migration is intense, all understand and want to crack down on the cynical business of smugglers and traffickers. This is organised crime. And we have to fight it, like we fight organised crime.
Finally, on returns. As you know, the return rate this year so far has been of 22% of those who have a returned decision. This amount has to increase. Therefore, we offer to Member States much closer cooperation as Team Europe to speed up the procedures to ensure the mutual recognition of return decisions – if you have the decision in one Member State, it is valid for all 27 Member States – and, most importantly, to organise joint return operations.
The better we are in the part that I mentioned at the very beginning – the legal migration, the legal pathways, the investment in education –, the stricter we can be in the part of irregular migration. And this was finally also the conclusion of the debate on migration. I will stop here.
