Recital (34)

The EU Talent Pool should meet established needs on the labour market and should not serve as a means to displace or negatively affect the existing workforce or otherwise undermine decent work or fair competition. To better support Member States’ efforts in addressing existing and future labour and skills shortages and improving competitiveness, the EU Talent Pool should target specific occupations at relevant skill levels, based on the most common shortage occupations in the Union and on the occupations with a direct contribution to the green and digital transitions, listed in the Annex to this Regulation. In order to adapt the job vacancies to the specific needs of the national labour markets as well to as national migration policies and taking as a starting point the list of Union-wide shortage occupations, participating Member States should be able to notify the Secretariat of specific shortage occupations to be added or removed from that list. Member States should be able to decide on necessary adjustments to the list of Union-wide shortage occupations so that the list corresponds to specific labour market needs at national or regional level. In the case of specific regional labour market needs, Member States should be able to decide that the National Contact Point be responsible for filtering the job vacancies, so that they correspond to the relevant territorial dimension when they are made available on the IT Platform. Such notifications should only impact the matches for job vacancies submitted by the respective Member State. It is important that neither the list of Union-wide shortage occupations nor the Member States’ notifications affect the principle of preference for Union citizens and, where applicable under national law, the examination of the labour market situation.