In July 2020, the European Commission presented the New Skills Agenda for Europe. This is not a new initiative, but it builds upon the Commission’s 2016 Skills Agenda that introduced a few years back. It is a 5 years long, ambitious plan to upskill and reskill the Europeans to respond to change.

The plan is to partner with all member States and realize the right to training and lifelong learning, enshrined in its European Pillar of Social Rights. In other words, the Commission wants all Europeans to benefit from whether they live in cities or remote rural areas.

Moreover, this initiative comes at a crucial time when the coronavirus pandemic has transformed the labor market. This training will have a green and digital transition in mind, altering the business environment in the coming years.

EU skills agenda 2020

Similarly, the move towards a carbon-neutral Europe and digital transformation is altering the labor market. For this reason, Europe needs to make the proper changes now to respond to future needs. That is why the Commission has set out a detailed 12 action plan to achieve this ambitious plan:

• A call to join forces in collective action:
  • Action 1: A Pact for Skills
• Actions to ensure that people have the right skills for jobs:
  • Action 2: Strengthening skills intelligence
  • Action 3: EU support for strategic national upskilling action
  • Action 4: Proposal for a Council Recommendation on vocational education and training (VET)
  • Action 5: Rolling out the European Universities Initiative and upskilling scientists
  • Action 6: Skills to support the twin transitions
  • Action 7: Increasing STEM graduates and fostering entrepreneurial and transversal skills
  • Action 8: Skills for life
• Tools and initiatives to support people in their lifelong learning pathways:
  • Action 9: Initiative on individual learning accounts
  • Action 10: A European approach to micro-credentials
  • Action 11: New Europass platform
• A framework to unlock investments in skills:
  • Action 12: Improving the enabling framework to unlock Member States’ and private investments in skills

Pact for skills

The Pact for Skills is the first and latest development in the new Skills Agenda for Europe initiative. It was launched on 10 November 2020 and is an invitation to join forces for upskilling and reskilling the Europeans.

Specifically, it invites public and private organizations and anyone who can play a key role in this workforce transformation. There is a registration platform where organizations need to agree to uphold certain principles to join the Pact.

• To promote a culture of lifelong learning for all
• To build strong skills partnerships
• To monitor skills needs and demands
• To work against discrimination, gender equality, and equal opportunities.

Furthermore, to support all these different participating organizations’ collaboration, the Pact for Skills will offer some dedicated services. It will particularly act as a networking hub, a knowledge hub, and a guidance and resources hub. To clarify, these three hubs will offer support in finding partners, webinars, and seminars for information and guidance to identify opportunities.  

Conclusion

In short, the new Skills Agenda for Europe is on course to have a big impact in the coming years. Undoubtedly, we live in extremely troubling times that will bring many rearrangements in the way we live and work.

For this reason, this whole initiative by the Commission is a really ambitious one in anticipation of these changes. Finally, putting people in the epicenter of these actions will help protect them and continue living a fulfilling life.

The Institute of Entrepreneurship Development (iED) looks with excitement at all the latest developments in the field. Above all, our partners know our commitment to training people of any background to help them stay competitive in the labor market. A prime example of this is the Flexi-Tour project that we contributed to upskilling professionals in the tourism sector. Our passion and forward-thinking in managing people’s skills are observable in our expanded list of implemented projects.

We are always looking to share our gathered expertise and experience with more partners. Become a partner today if you don’t want to miss out on the exciting years ahead.