A new skills agenda for Europe

‘A New Skills Agenda for Europe’ was published on 10 June 2016 by the European Commission. Its focus is on equipping Europeans with the right skills in order to increase Europe’s workforce employability and to respond to changes in labour market requirements. The agenda is grounded on the evidence of the existence of skills gap and mismatch across the Union and within countries. There is a shortage of basic, digital, transversal, and entrepreneurial skills. A common understanding of key competences on the job is missing. Vocational education and training (VET) is undervalued and its attractiveness and opportunities may be enhanced. Overall, skills intelligence allowing for more informed choices is indispensable for skills policies to make a difference in addressing the extent of mismatch of supplied competences and the occurrence of gaps. All these aspects are relevant at the territorial level. In fact, the outlining of policies and/or interventions in the domains of education and training as well as of youth, employment and migration is not solely a prerogative of national governments.

It also occurs at the local and regional level. Furthermore, it is at this same level that labour market needs meet the skills supply and that future trends of job opportunities as well as cooperative approaches among different stakeholders of the labour market are shaped.

A first objective of the study is to provide an overview across Europe of the state of the art of skills (Part 1). While most of this information is available only at the national level, there is evidence of heterogeneous educational attainment of the economically active population across European regions. Differences occur between Member States but even largely within individual countries, as is the case for France, Denmark, Finland the Netherlands and the UK. This also applies to the importance given to VET and lifelong learning.

Second, the study looks into the measure and progress of skills market misalignment, the future demand of skills, and the hypothetical socio-economic consequences that skills gap and mismatch may have at the territorial level (Part 2).

EU Bookshop: Find further publications of the Committee of the Regions through EU Bookshop http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/committee-of-the-regions-of-the-european-union-cbziQKABstXaMAAAEjH4kY4e5K/

ESO: Background information: Ten actions to help equip people in Europe with better skills http://www.europeansources.info/record/press-release-ten-actions-to-help-equip-people-in-europe-with-better-skills/

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