Dear friends and colleagues!

In 1995, the Managing Director of AMS, Mr. Herbert Buchinger and his colleagues first organised the Conference of managing directors of Central European Employment Services. The conference encouraged an extremely productive cooperation between managing personnel and employees of the mentioned PES. Exchange of experiences, examples of good application as well as cooperation in finding suitable solutions during various workshops helped our organisations adjust more easily to great changes in the labour market and to respond more effectively to the demands of our clients and partners. Many established contacts encouraged an even more intense cooperation among individual Services and their employees.

The Employment Service of Slovenia, which has been an active member from the very beginning, also benefited from the established connections, which contributed to its development and strengthened its role in the labour market. The presented experiences, examples of good application and opportunities for exchange of expert opinions have substantially shortened the ways in the process of adjustment to numerous changes, which occurred in the labour market as well as in the expectations of our partners, clients and, last, but not least, our government.

In the last two years, Slovenia experienced several positive changes – the number of the unemployed gradually came to decrease, the employment increased, and the share of the young unemployed, the long-term unemployed and the elderly unemployed decreased. Our programmes were brought into line with the guidelines of the EU employment policy.

We have changed our internal organisation and enriched our fields of work, through which we provide for our clients – the unemployed as well as the employers. We defined the goals, the responsibilities and the jurisdictions of the managing sector and the employees more clearly. Due to limited resources, we established an expense monitoring system. At the same time, we tend to establish the most rational and optimal work-process organisation possible. The Quality Project, aiming at the quality certificate, forms a part of all our activities. The use of modern informational technology (Intranet, Internet) enables us to improve the circulation of information and to control the realisation of our goals. At the same time, we gradually improve the manager's informational system as a support system in the decision-making process at all managing levels.

Apart from encouraging partnership at all levels of our activity, we wish to improve our services and consequently increase the satisfaction of our customers – the unemployed, employers and scholars. In the framework of the Phare programme Twinning, we established first standards of communication with the unemployed, which are presently being applied in all our braches. The quality project directs us towards the systematic approach to the amelioration of our internal processes and, consequently, to the greater satisfaction of our customers and employees. Since many other Employment Services are engaged in such activity, we motivated the General Directors of the Employment Services present at this year's conference to exchange the experiences and the examples of good application praxis.

I believe that this year's 5^th Conference of General Directors of Central European Employment Services, organised by the Employment Service of Slovenia is an important step towards the continuation of good relationships as it represents a great support in meeting new challenges, which will even more increase after our accession to the EU.

This year, we are honoured to host the General Directors of the Croatian and Polish Employment Services, who I officially welcome at our informal meeting.

The accession to the EU, encountered by the majority of the Employment Services present, represents a great challenge and a great encouragement to our meeting. Mr. Frank Kavanach, working in the European Commission for the enlargement of the EU, in the fields, associated with the Employment Services and was kind enough to join our meeting, represents an important link between our Employment Services and the EU.

I wish you all to feel as good as possible during your stay in Slovenia and to seize this opportunity to exchange opinions and information with your colleagues and to get acquainted with our country and our Employment Service. I hope you will gladly return to our country in the future!