Skills for the green transition: harnessing a unique expertise
Europe’s green and digital needs are driving a huge transition. “It has never happened in our history. How do you transform industry with millions and millions of workers in under a generation?” asked Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, at the first high-level Pact for Skills Forum, held in Brussels on 21–22 March. A skills revolution is one answer.
The twin imperatives are entwined – new and many more digital skills are needed to achieve the green transition, which is also driving the development of new technologies.
Both transitions also link the public and private sectors in efforts to achieve a skills revolution. While companies need to lead skills initiatives that meet their needs, Forum moderator Paul Guest pointed out that continental decisions around the future of Europe, such as the green and digital decisions, “are informing the skill sets that we will need to make those things happen”.
The European Commission has launched several initiatives to support the development of skills across the continent. During March and April, the European Training Foundation (ETF) is highlighting initiatives it is supporting in building skills for the green economy.
The need for a skills revolution
Organised by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion, the first Pact for Skills Forum on “Unlocking skills potential across Europe” was held on 21–22 March in Brussels. It was attended by some 100 people in person and 500 online guests – labour market and skills development practitioners, policy-makers and social partners aligned with the Pact for Skills, from different countries and regions, sectors and fields.
The Pact for Skills is the first of the Commission’s flagship actions under the European Skills Agenda. It is aimed at supporting upskilling and reskilling efforts across Europe. “It is firmly anchored in the European Pillar of Social Rights and supports the ambitions of the EU Industrial and SME Strategies,” says its website.
Why has it become so urgent to act on skills? Paul Guest asked two of the Commissioners leading the skills revolution: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights.
Europe’s green and digital transitions have changed everything, said Schmit. “We have to reinvent industry, we have to reinvent the functioning of our societies.”
Europe has the objective of zero carbon emissions by 2050, so it needs to change its energy pattern from fossil fuels to renewables in a very short time. While in five years nobody spoke much about artificial intelligence (AI), today generative AI, including ChatGPT, is the centre of attention in companies, administrations, services and others.
Europe has a major shortage of labour and skills, for demographic reasons. Some 70% of companies surveyed say they cannot find enough appropriate skills for their jobs.
“There is a big need for skilling and upskilling our workforce. We also have to change the way people transit from one job to another due to technological change. All that is happening very fast, so we do not have 10 years, 20 years, 30 years as in previous times,” Schmit explained.
What is being done to face skills shortages?
In 2020, Breton, in collaboration with Schmit, agreed to categorise Europe’s industrial capacity into 14 industrial ecosystems. The Pact for Skills was launched in November 2020, as a shared engagement model for skills development.
Public and private organisations were invited to join forces and take concrete actions to upskill and reskill people in Europe. Companies, workers, authorities at all levels, social partners, cross-industry and sectoral organisations, education and training providers, chambers of commerce and employment services – all have a key role to play.
Thousands of stakeholders now work together in the ecosystems, and the result has been the retraining of five million people. “Our ambition now is 25 million by 2030,” said Breton. He and Schmit learned that engaging all stakeholders is key, along with the 14 ecosystems, as each is very different from the other.
“We developed this unique knowhow and expertise at the level of our continent. We realise, of course, that one of our strengths is to do this together in Europe.” This is because different member countries have different competences and skills: “We need to have more mobility. We will also not be able to do this while closing our borders. We need external talent,” Breton said.
“It is important to promote a culture for upskilling and reskilling,” Schmit said. “To persuade companies that if they do not invest in skilling their workforce, they will lose competitiveness, and innovation and productivity” – one of the European economy’s big problems.
There is a strong need to promote STEM fields, and to guide lots more young people and women into STEM fields. There are also people who do not specialise in areas such as mathematics or physics, but can become talented IT specialists.
“Skills in the green industry for the green change is fundamental,” said Schmit. But green skills are largely skills that already exist, with some new orientation. To provide another example, a person who installs solar panels needs to know some elements of electricity.
He stressed the importance of technical and vocational education and training as a route to draw people with new skills into the market, and also highlighted the potential of micro credentials, as a way to ensure the recognition of the skills they learn.
“We will spend for the next decade more than €60 billion per year for our green transition at the level of the EU,” said Breton. “That’s a huge amount of money, both public and private. Our goal is to be at carbon zero by 2050, but we’ll not achieve this goal while exporting our jobs.”
Europe needs skilled migrants
Breton spoke about his visits to huge car battery factories in the French port city of Dunkirk a few weeks ago. They told him they had everything they needed – except people. It is the same story in the cybersecurity field, where in 2023 the shortage of professionals in the EU ranged between 260,000 and 500,000, with the workforce needs estimated at 883,000.
There are lots of skills outside Europe. India is producing one million digital engineers per year.
“We need them, we cannot produce them,” said Schmit.
Europe must attract more skilled people from outside the continent, but is sending out all the wrong messages because of its negative approach to migration.
Europe is also losing its own skills, attracted by soaring innovation in America and elsewhere. Talented Europeans need to have the ability to innovate here, rather than in Silicon Valley.
Europe has world leading universities. “We know that on the one hand we are training the best talents on the planet in AI. Our duty is to make sure that they stay in Europe. It needs to be the best place for people to develop their lives and their talents. Europe has the vision and an instrument, Schmit added, but the only way to do it is together.”
ETF support for skills and migration
The ETF works on the skills dimensions of migration to help citizens in its partner countries improve their employability in a global world. It helps to implement the labour migration component of the European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum. It contributes to the design and carrying out of Talent Partnerships with Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia for win-win-win solutions for migrants, their countries of origin and the countries of destination. The ETF also contributes to THAMM (Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance and Labour Mobility in North Africa) project. More