A survey report conducted among 30 PES summarises the recent developments concerning the integration of the long-term unemployed back into the labour market and provides an overview of the effects of the Council Recommendation reported by PES.

The survey results show that the adoption of the Council recommendation on the integration of the long-term unemployed into the labour market encouraged a number of PES to implement new measures aimed at increasing the registration of jobseekers and inactive people.

Also, although measures to prevent the entry of the unemployed into long-term unemployment in many of the European PES were already well-established before the adoption of the Recommendation, new measures were introduced in roughly half of the PES.

Overall, PES seem to be well-advanced in offering individualised support to the long-term unemployed. Arrangements for a single point of contact (SPOC) widely vary between PES:

• half the PES are the only institutions providing a SPOC,
• around one third of PES provide a SPOC in cooperation with other institutions, and
• six countries have so far not appointed an institution to offer a SPOC but some changes are being discussed.

Although no consensus exists among PES as to which measures lead to the best results to help the long-term unemployed integrate into the labour market, a high share of PES believes that intensive counselling/profiling are measures that have a positive impact. Cooperation with employers is also considered to be helpful by the majority of PES.

Over half of the PES made changes in policy prioritisation since the adoption of the Recommendation while half of the PES reported that the Recommendation led to changes in self-monitoring.

Finally, challenges experienced by PES when implementing the Recommendation vary widely from characteristics of the group and reluctance among employers to hire this group unless given additional public support, to systemic challenges.