Mr. Ivailo Kalfin:

That is a very good question. I will try to it all squeeze in. To us, the European way of working and living is part of the European competitiveness because when we speak about retaining European citizens to work here and not go somewhere else but also to attract talents and people who are competent to come and work in Europe, they would not come for the service - they cannot have it every way - rather they come for the standards, the health standards, access to education, to healthcare, how they can raise their children here, etc. The whole model of living and working in Europe is attractive currently. The Chair is absolutely right that Europe is an attractive place. Probably some say it is not competitive enough but in attracting talent, it is probably at the top of the competitors list. The big challenge there is to keep exactly that. That is why we are trying this ongoing debate in Europe about competitiveness. It should not be at the expense of the values and standards of Europe. If you decrease the standards you will probably compete with some countries where standards are less attractive but you will not be more competitive in general. If you want to be a place that attracts people, and I am thinking again about the human factor in the work, Europe has to preserve this. Looking for competitiveness, Europe is still the largest economy in the world. There are issues that apparently need to be addressed to increase competitiveness but the standards of living and working in Europe are definitely attractive and if we do not want to lose our talents they need to be there. They have to do with many of the initiatives on the quality jobs and anti-poverty. I will not go very much beyond that. In our research, including the working conditions survey, we see a trend, which is a constant trend of 30 years, of improving living and working conditions in Europe. However, we have to look beyond the average numbers because we see pockets of marginalisation in Europe in the background of overall improvement in conditions where we have people who are stuck in some unfavourable situations whether due to housing issues, low salary, health or things like that or because they live in a region that is not developing. According to our research, that has to be the focus because what happens is that these groups of people, although not that large, are a strong factor to decrease political stability in countries and we see this across Europe. All the anti-establishment movements are very much fuelled by people who are not happy with the way they live and work. It is not that they are very far left or far right or whatever, they just do not want to have what they have. It is very important to address these pockets of marginalisation if we want to have a more coherent tissue of society. I would say that is the bigger challenge.