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The European Software Association (ESA) just released a White Paper called “European Software Industry: looking for a competitive advantage” in which the trade association makes some recommendations to European policy makers regarding the future of the software industry in Europe.



While UNI EUROPA IBITS fully agrees on the main recommendations such as fostering co-operation between governments, industry and academia to deliver lifelong IT learning, we think some points might be improved. Multistakeholder partnerships, including social partners, should also be considered as an option to improve the conditions of software production in Europe.



In fact, when analyzing the recent trends in the software industry, the report underlines the positive effects that the increased rate of merger and acquisition activity has had on the industry while the impact of that on employees is not considered at all. UNI EUROPA IBITS does not pretend that mergers and acquisitions don’t have positive effects, but some negative ones such as workers’ redundancies shouldn’t be overlooked.



ESA complains about the shortage of highly skilled workers in the industry. Although UNI EUROPA IBITS doesn’t contend the fact that some shortages exist in specific areas such as software programming, we are not sure this lack of qualified people can be found “at all level of IT use”. In addition, ESA gives some solutions to overcome this problem, but the inclusion of underrepresented groups such as women and minorities in the industry as well as the improvement of salaries and working conditions for software professionals are not mentioned. Less than 20% of software professionals are women. The industry will have to strengthen efforts to improve its image and to feature positive role models. Again social dialogue or multistakeholder partnerhships should be considered to get the message to young girls and students and to attract them to consider careers in science and technology.



When it comes to the mobility of workers, UNI EUROPA IBITS is aware that Europe needs to attract more highly skilled people but in the respect of certain rules. The blue card initiative may be good if and only if workers are encouraged to stay in the union for a long period of time and enjoy the same working conditions as European citizens. The blue card is certainly not enough to make Europe a more attractive destination for talent from all over the world.



Finally, the paper urges policy makers to increase investments in R&D in order to foster growth and innovation, which UNI EUROPA IBITS fully supports.