Brussels, 5 March 2025
The Union of Skills will support the development of our Union’s human capital to strengthen EU competitiveness. A key initiative of the first 100 days of this Commission, the Union of Skills will:
- Deliver higher levels of basic skills, for example through the Basic Skills Support Scheme pilot;
- Provide lifelong opportunities for adults to regularly upskill and reskill, for example through a Skills Guarantee pilot;
- Facilitate recruitment by businesses across the EU, for example through a Skills Portability Initiative;
- Attract and retain the skills and talents needed in the European economy, for example through the ‘Choose Europe’ action to attract top talent globally;
- Have a strong governance foundation, building on the new European Skills High-Level Board that will be informed by a European Skills Intelligence Observatory.
From children at school to those reaching retirement, this initiative will empower people across Europe with the skills they need to thrive. It will also encourage the portability of skills across the continent through the free movement of knowledge and innovation.
The Union of Skills Communication is accompanied by an Action Plan on Basic Skills and a STEM Education Strategic Plan to improve skills in science, technology, engineering, and maths, promote STEM careers, attract more girls and women, and boost preparedness in the face of digital and clean-tech transitions.
New targets for 2030
The Commission proposes a number of new targets by 2030:
- The share of underachievement in literacy, mathematics, science and digital skills should be less than 15%, whereas the share of top performance in literacy, mathematics and science should be at least 15%;
- The share of students enrolled in STEM fields in initial medium-level VET should be at least 45%, with at least 1 out of every 4 students female;
- The share of students enrolled in STEM fields in third-level education be at least 32%, with at least 2 out of 5 students female;
- The share of students enrolled in ICT PhD programmes should be at least 5%, with at least 1 out of every 3 students female.
Building a solid foundation through education and training
Education and training play an essential role in creating quality jobs and lives, for example we will support literacy, maths, science, digital and citizenship skills through the Basic Skills Support Scheme pilot. Together with Member States, the Commission will develop and financially support a framework of effective intervention measures (such as early warning, monitoring, personalised support, networks). This scheme for children and young people that struggle to acquire basic skills will improve their achievement levels.
Regular upskilling and reskilling as the new norm
Developing new skills should be a recurring and essential part of peoples’ professional lives in our evolving economies.
The Commission will develop a Skills Guarantee pilot. This scheme will offer workers involved in restructuring processes, or at risk of unemployment, the opportunity to develop further their careers in another company or another sector.
The EU will streamline and reinforce the EU Skills Academies that deliver the skills needed by businesses for the green transition and the Clean Industrial Deal.
Helping the free movement of skilled people
The Single Market’s full potential will be unlocked by circulating skills. To open up more opportunities for workers and businesses, a Skills Portability Initiative will make it easier to recognise and accept skills and qualifications across the EU, independently of where they were acquired. The initiative will promote the use of digital credentials.
Making the EU a magnet for talent
The Union of Skills will bolster the EU’s ability to attract, develop and retain key talents, from inside the EU and around the world.
For example, the Commission will launch a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions pilot call ‘Choose Europe’ with a budget of €22.5 million to attract top talent globally, by offering excellent scientific working and employment conditions and careers prospects.
Furthermore, once adopted by the Parliament and Council, the Commission will set up an EU Talent Pool for recruitment from outside the EU at all skills levels, especially in occupations facing severe shortages. A Visa Strategy will be presented this year to further support the arrival of top students, trained workers, and researchers.
Strong new governance
Delivering on the Union of Skills will require a collective responsibility and increased ambition, investment, and effective reform implementation. For this, the Union of Skills will rest on a strong governance, informed by a European Skills Intelligence Observatory. The observatory will provide data and foresight regarding skills and allow for early warning alerts regarding skills shortages in critical or strategic sectors.
A new European Skills High-Level Board, will bring together education and training providers, business leaders and social partners to provide comprehensive insights on skills to the EU policy makers. Building on the Observatory the Board will ensure a coordinated vision and the identification of the bold action necessary to strengthen our human capital.
Because human capital, education and skills are a core matter for ensuring European competitiveness, the Commission intends to introduce a new EU-27 Recommendation on education and skills in the European Semester cycle, to guide the Member States and relevant actors.
More information
- A Union of Skills (Communication)
- Union of Skills website
- Questions & Answers
- Union of Skills factsheet
- Skills development, labour and skills shortages – factsheets for all 27 Member States (Cedefop)
- Action Plan on Basic Skills
- STEM Education Strategic Plan
- Action Plan on Basic Skills factsheet
- STEM Education Strategic Plan factsheet
Quote
The Union of Skills is our strategy to help people stay ahead in a rapidly changing world and keep Europe competitive and fair. We, in Europe, put people first because the success of every person in learning, at work and in life is essential for competitiveness and for a stable and resilient Union.
Roxana Mînzatu, Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness
Source – EU Commission
Questions and answers on the Union of Skills
Brussels, 5 March 2025
Why are you launching the Union of Skills now?
Europe is facing a skills crisis that threatens its competitiveness, innovation, and ability to adapt to global challenges.
- Skills shortages and gaps are widespread—nearly four in five SMEs struggle to find workers with the right skillsets, particularly in breakthrough technologies like AI and quantum computing. Shortages will likely increase with the projected decline in the working age population from 265 million in 2022 to 258 million by 2030.
- Education systems are not keeping pace with technological change, with nearly half of young people lacking basic digital skills and declining performance in mathematics, reading, and science. Meanwhile, only 40% of adults participate in education or training, far below the 60% target, and almost half lack basic digital skills despite 90% of jobs requiring them.
- Gender imbalances in STEM, lack of attractiveness, and fragmented governance further exacerbate the issue.
Without urgent action, labour shortages in high-demand sectors will grow, limiting Europe’s economic growth, global competitiveness, decarbonisation efforts, and resilience in times of crisis.
How is the strategy going to tackle these issues?
The Union of Skills focuses on four strands to ensure everyone in Europe is empowered to build solid skills foundations and engage in lifelong upskilling and reskilling:
- Building skills for quality lives and jobs through strong educational foundation;
- Upskilling and reskilling an agile workforce for the digital and green transition;
- Circulating skills across the EU for competitiveness;
- Attracting, developing, and retaining talent for Europe’s future.
Starting today and continuing over the coming years, the Commission will launch a series of actions under each of the four strands to deliver on the Union of Skills, in close collaboration with citizens, businesses and education and training providers. More information on each of these strands found below.
How will you fund the Union of Skills?
Education and skills are an investment which yields benefits many times over. The current EU budget allocates over €150 billion in funds to education and skills, including through programmes such as ESF+, RRF, ERDF, Erasmus+ and InvestEU.
This is only part of the picture. It is crucial to leverage financing and initiatives beyond EU funds in both the public and private sector. To this end, the Union of Skills puts forward actions to:
- Boost private sector investment in training, upskilling and reskilling;
- Help Member States make appropriate use of EU funding possibilities and partnerships with the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group, and other multilateral or national promotional banks.
How will you improve the provision of the basic skills needed for a solid educational foundation?
To ensure quality jobs and lives, skills should be built through strong educational and vocational training systems, in a lifelong learning approach. An Action Plan for Basic Skills will pilot a Basic Skills Support Scheme. This will focus on root causes of basic skills shortfalls and allow for early identification and intervention. An EU Teachers and training Agenda will be developed, and sharing best innovative practice will be boosted by piloting European Schools Alliances.
What actions are you proposing to tackle skills and labour shortages in the EU?
The proposed actions cover different levels and types of education and training, different groups of learners and skill levels. These measures encourage as many people as possible to participate in the labour market.
Focusing on the role of vocational education and training (VET) in supporting EU competitiveness and innovation, the new European Strategy for VET will address skills shortages and mismatches by enhancing its attractiveness, excellence, quality and labour market relevance. The Strategy will also address gender and other stereotypes in making study choices and ensure that VET is an equally valued learning pathway as higher education.
Actions also include a reinforced and streamlined Pact for Skills to upskill and reskill more workers in strategic sectors, that will build on the success of the existing Pact, where its members have pledged to upskill 25 million workers by 2030. The Commission is calling on Pact members to at least double their commitments.
The Commission will also review and strengthen the roll-out of EU Skills Academies, to deliver the skills to meet the economic needs of today and the future. The academies will help strategic sectors such as defence and digital technology, covering for instance for artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductors.
How will the strategy make it easier for skilled people to move freely across Europe?
We need to ensure that learning, skills and qualifications, irrespective of where and how they were acquired, are transparent, trusted and recognised across the EU. This will contribute to unlock the Single Market’s full potential.
The Skills Portability Initiative will help make skills more visible and portable. It will facilitate the recognition of qualifications, where necessary. This is essential to avoid that people end up working in positions not corresponding to their qualifications and to improve skills matching in the single market.
It will also promote the use of interoperable digital credentials to help and speed up the understanding and transparency of skills and qualifications.
The Commission will also continue the work on the European Degree, which can facilitate the development of innovative joint European study programmes, as a flagship for quality learning mobility. It will also strengthen European Universities Alliances and will explore a suitable European legal status for alliances of higher education institutions. The Commission will also work towards a potential European VET diploma for vocational education and training.
How will you attract top talent to come and stay in Europe?
The Union of Skills proposes measures to attract and retain talent from third countries. This includes measures to make the European education and training systems more attractive to people outside the EU, but also to facilitate the recruitment of third-country nationals. Established programmes like ‘Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions’ will develop a ‘Choose Europe’ dimension. Erasmus Mundus scholarships and ‘Study in Europe’ promotional activity will be upscaled. In this way the EU will attract more top global talent.
The Commission will also set up the future EU Talent Pool. A Visa Strategy will ensure that students, researchers and skilled professionals from outside the EU can benefit from quicker procedures. This will help fill shortages in key sectors such as healthcare, IT, and construction Promoting air working conditions and integration support for third-country nationals will make Europe a more attractive destination for talent, while helping secure EU’s future economic resilience and innovation potential.
How will the Union of Skills help workers, in particular those whose jobs will transform?
Most jobs will change to some extent due to the green and/or digital transitions. Everyone will need to develop the necessary skills to navigate these transitions.
The Union of Skills will also help those already in employment, putting forward actions to develop and retain talent. For example, a Skills Guarantee will be piloted, offering workers involved in restructuring processes, or at risk of unemployment, the possibility to develop further their careers in new employment opportunities.
The reinforced and streamlined Pact for Skills will also help to upskill workers in strategic industrial eco-systems. The expanded European Alliance for Apprenticeships will enable ever more adults to upskill, including those outside the labour market.
How will the Union of Skills help businesses?
The Union of Skills aims to ensure that European businesses can find people with the skills they need to create sustainable growth and quality jobs. With AI, robotics, data-driven processes and the clean transition transforming industries, addressing these and future skills shortages is critical to maintaining the EU’s global competitiveness.
The measures proposed by the Union of Skills will also support small and medium-sized enterprises, scale-ups and start-ups. SMEs are the backbone of the EU economy, representing around 99% of all enterprises. Yet, nearly 4 in 5 have difficulties in finding workers with the right skills.
The measures proposed will help develop the skills needed by EU businesses, with a focus on basic skills, and future-oriented skills, such as STEM and advanced digital skills. They will also help employers recruit with less difficulties talent from abroad, including from third countries.
What about young people?
The Union of Skills will focus on:
- Increasing the accessibility of higher education to a wider range of learners as well as promoting support services for students’ wellbeing to help them succeed.
- Providing more opportunities through innovative joint European study programmes, and get a European degree or a European VET diploma recognised across the EU.
- Strengthening the Erasmus+ programme to make it more inclusive and accessible for all, with a particular focus on learners with fewer opportunities – including in VET.
How will the strategy help to reverse the decline of basic skills in the EU?
A Basic Skills Support Scheme will help Member States ensure that every child reach an adequate level of basic skills by the end of compulsory schooling with a focus on early intervention and personalised support.
Investing in our youth is an investment in our future. Measures will include an EU Teachers and Trainers Agenda to improve the working conditions, training and career prospects of educators, and better cross-border cooperation and mobility between schools across Europe.
Erasmus+ will also be strengthened to make it more inclusive and accessible for all, with a particular focus on learners with fewer opportunities.
How will you make this happen? What would be the governance of the UoS?
A European Skills Intelligence Observatory will provide strategic data and foresight regarding skills (current and future) stocks, use and needs, in concrete sectors and regions, and the performance of education and training systems.
A European Skills High-Level Board bringing together the key stakeholders, including business leaders, education and training providers, and social partners to provide comprehensive, cross-sectoral insights and guidance on skills to the EU policy makers, ensuring a coordinated vision and the identification of the bold action necessary to strengthen our human capital.
The Board will support the work of the Commission towards an EU-27 Recommendation on human capital and on the country-specific recommendations in the European Semester cycle.
Source – EU Commission
Press remarks by Executive Vice-President Mînzatu on the Union of Skills
Brussels, 5 March 2025
“Check against delivery”
Good afternoon. Today in the College meeting, we have had some important topics on the agenda. First, we had an interesting conversation with the president of the World Bank Group, Mr Ajay Banga. Then a very expected outcome of our work is the Action Plan for the Automotive Sector. We adopted the Communication for the Action Plan on the Decarbonisation of Corporate Fleets and Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas will be in the press room here shortly after this press conference to provide more details.
We also adopted the Union of Skills and two other deliverables, the Action Plan for Basic Skills and an Action Plan for STEM Education. I will go into further details on that topic. And finally, we also discussed and adopted today the Roadmap for Women’s Rights. We adopted it. It will be adopted by written procedure on Friday and on Friday, Commissioner Hadja Lahbib will come to discuss with you more details on that topic.
I would then go into some details about the Union of Skills and what it means, what we put forward, and what it will mean in the future, because we are just starting the work on skills. One of the critical responses that our Union needs to deliver in order to be competitive is a response to the skills shortage and to the labour shortage as well. So that is why we are putting forward the Union of Skills and the first two deliverables, which is an Action Plan on Basic Skills and one on STEM. The work will continue, further along in time, we will come with an action plan on vocational and educational training and one for teachers and trainers.
But let me outline briefly, not being descriptive, how we see this vision for skills for Europe, the Union of Skills, and some key initiatives, that are new tools and I think should be known. We built the Union of Skills on four pillars and two horizontal key enablers. As a response to the situation that we are facing, which is that we are on a declining pathway in the basic skills achievement of our young generation and of the adults. One out of three, 33%, of our teenagers, are failing in basic math. This is absolutely critical. One out of four, 25%, are failing in science. Almost half lack basic skills. With adults, we do not have a much better picture. They are also lagging behind in certain areas such as digital skills, but many lack even sufficient basic skills as well.
Another challenge that we have is that the industry, the economy, is transforming at a rapid pace and our education and skilling systems cannot keep up. There is even a disruptive tendency that we are seeing with the automation AI using the new tools that change workplaces, that change the profile of jobs, that change industries. We need to address this difference in speed as well.
And another issue and another systemic aspect that we want to address through the Union of Skills is the fragmentation. In the European Union, we talk a lot about fragmentation in different sectors. Yes, we have fragmentation in the way we respond to the need to skill and educate our population. I will give here just a brief example. The European Union does not have competence, legal competence, mostly on education and skills, but it does invest a lot of money. We invest and we looked at all the EU strands through which we invest EU money in skills and education. We invest overall €150 billion in the current MFF, 2021 to 2027, that means RRF, Cohesion policy, Erasmus, InvestEU and other funding strands. But they have different management systems, different policy objectives, and obviously, we are not being able to provide the impact. We need to spend this money much better. These are elements for which we come forward with this Union of Skills to which we are providing answers as well.
Coming back to the structure of the Union of Skills, so four pillars, two horizontal enablers. Pillar one, measures on improving basic skills. I would mention here two elements that I think are interesting and important for you to know. We propose a set of five basic skills, we increase the number of basic skills and we define them in a broader sense, not just literacy, maths, science, digital literacy, also citizenship literacy, where we have a multiple elements including media literacy, preparedness, civic education, and so on and so forth. This is one novelty.
Another novelty is that we propose a Basic Skills Support Scheme to be accessed mainly by schools that are facing systemic, repetitive failures in equipping their students with the basic skills at the level of achievement that is necessary. This Basic Skills Scheme we will first of all pilot, starting this year, learn from the lessons of the pilot and then scale it up with the funds that we have, with the national budget, with the resources that we can gather. We want to bring this Basic Skills Support Scheme to life in order to tackle this.
This being said, another important pillar, the second pillar of the Union of Skills, and one that was mentioned many times by social partners, is workplace training, the re-skilling and up-skilling of workers. We are aware that we need also to change the mindset, to provide the stimulation, financial support to companies so that workers, no matter their age, no matter their position in the company, are able to navigate the transition and the transformation of their industries.
There are industries that are already facing challenges. We look at the automotive sector, we discussed it today, so we need to support workers to be able to re-skill, up-skill, to remain in the same company, in the same industry, or transition in other jobs in the same company or in similar industries. And that can be done. For that we propose a tool that is called the Skills Guarantee for Workers. We also will pilot it, probably for automotive, and offer the support for training, re-skilling, but also active labour measures for the companies that support the workers that are at risk of unemployment or that could be repositioned inside the industry so that they are more secure with their job, that they are able to continue to function effectively in a quality job in the respective company or industry.
I would then mention the third pillar of the Union of Skills, which is about a European labour force, but it is about the mobility inside our Union, our internal market andbetween member states. Here we have certain tools in place but they work with difficulty. The recognition of diplomas is always a topic, we have barriers, it takes a lot of time to have your diploma recognised. But what we propose is inspired by our dialogue with the companies, the skills-first approach. We will propose a Skills Portability Initiative, one that will allow an automatic recognition of the skills of workers and professionals, so it is not only about diplomas and qualifications, we are going to the level of skills. The Skills Portability Initiative is such an example of an initiative that we want to put forward so that we ensure the automatic recognition of skills throughout the Union, and we can address the labour and skill shortages with the resources that we have inside our Union.
Other examples I would want to put for the internal mobility pillar is that we want to develop a European VET degree. We have started the work on the higher education European degree, but we want the European VET degree, vocational and educational training, to receive special treatment. We have a distinct plan, I mentioned it because we want to increase the attractiveness and the number of people that enter this type of education and a European VET degree is one such tool. We also will work on a European degree for engineers.
The fourth pillar is related to the attraction of workforce and talent from outside the European Union. We are talking with industries, I have been talking to healthcare sector, they are telling us they need 2 million workers by 2030, the construction sector, many more millions. There is a demographic reality that tells us that we are losing active labour force due to aging, and industries need much more capacity. For that we are putting forward initiatives such as the EU Talent Pool, which is a legal proposal already on the table, the trilogues will start in April. We have an EU-wide platform that would match international job seekers with the demands of the European industries, legal migration pathway that will ensure that we support our industries.
We also want to look not just at job seekers generally, but at highly talented, brilliant minds, researchers, doctoral, postdoctoral students, and to offer them the possibility to come and study in the European Union where they find that their values are shared and their research is valued. For that, we will pilot a Marie Skłodowska-Curie scholarship, Choose Europe, we call it and we are also looking at a visa program, we will work on it with the colleagues in the Commission so that the Visa program will offer facilities and easy access to all the legal roles, positions, entrepreneurial and employment roles inside the European Union.
Two key enablers, and I am closing with that, but those are the most important. One is the governance of the European Union. We have to continue to have the private sector involved. We have now strategic dialogues on automotive, on steel, they will continue, but for skills generally we need a type of governance that includes the private sector in the feeding of the policies. We establish a high-level skills board. This is a team that will include not just ministers of education, Commission, it will include also social partners, companies, employers, industries, who will discuss and propose on the policies and on the measures we need to deploy inside the Union of Skills to address the needs of the industries to better skill Europeans. This public-private board is one that will continuously feed our policies on all topics. Sometimes they will be more sectoral, sometimes more horizontal.
Second element, we need data, and we need data on skills forecasting, anticipating, better analysis, and we need it EU-wide. We currently have different types of national databases, some national, some sectoral, we will create an EU Skills Observatory which is a platform that will integrate all the data necessary for skills anticipation and for skills analysis and this will also feed our policies.
Third element is a bit more technical, but it is very important that we address the fragmentation of financing and decisions. We will have a brand new, EU-27 European Semester Recommendation on education and skills. We use the EU’s Semester cycle to issue the recommendation towards the Council so the Member States can take measures in the field of training and skills. It is the first time we put forward such a recommendation, which will be fed by the work of the High Levels Skills Board and by the information from the Observatory.
A few numbers and I close. On STEM, we want to be really ambitious, we will have a gender dimension. Our goal is that 45% of VET graduates are STEM, 32% of university graduates are STEM graduates. And we propose that by 2030, we bring 1 million women in a STEM education. These are very ambitious goals, but this is the only way that we can go forward. Thank you.
Source – EU Commission