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Brussels, October 24:: The European Union unveiled plans on Tuesday to launch Europe's biggest global job advertising blitz and set up a US-style 'Green Card' visa programme to lure skilled workers to fill increasing gaps across the 27-nation union.
The plan aims to "improve the EU's ability to attract and, where necessary, retain," international professionals like doctors, nurses, engineers and IT workers from abroad in a large-scale effort to fill ever growing shortages of skilled jobs across the EU, through a new fast-track "Blue Card" worker visa programme, the EU said.
"We are not good enough at attracting highly skilled people," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who along with Franco Frattini, EU commissioner in charge of immigration issues, presented the "Blue Card" plan.
Barroso said the visa plan would offer highly qualified job seekers a simpler way to get a job within the EU and, if approved by EU governments, would do away with about 20 different complex national procedures to get residence and work permits.
The measures would seek to lure professionals from across Asia, Africa and Latin America to work and live in the European Union.
Frattini said the EU at the moment was way behind other Western nations and economic rivals like the United States, Australia and Canada in attracting skilled labour.
He pointed to EU statistics which showed that non-EU highly qualified workers accounted for only 0.9 per cent of all workers in the EU, compared to 9.9 per cent in Australia, 7.3 per cent in Canada and 3.5 per cent in the US.
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