On 1st of July 2020, the Commission put forward an ambitious agenda to guide the recovery efforts in the employment and social area. The focus is on skills and VET. Proposals are an important contribution to the President’s Recovery Plan for Europe. They include the following.

The Commission Communication on a European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience puts forward 12 EU actions aimed at supporting partnerships for skills, up and reskilling for jobs and empowering people to keep on learning throughout their lives. A major deliverable will be a new Pact for Skills to be launched in November 2020 during the skills week. It sets ambitious quantitative objectives at EU level and outlines how the EU will support investments for skills. The Communication is accompanied by a Commission Staff Working Document on the Evaluation of the 2012 Council Recommendation on validation of informal and non-formal learning.

• Communication on the European Skills Agenda
• Factsheet on the European Skills Agenda
• Press release on the European Skills Agenda

The Commission proposal for a Council Recommendation on vocational education and training (VET) for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience provides the recipe to make sure VET equips young people and adults with the skills to support both the recovery and the green and digital transitions, while ensuring inclusiveness. The importance of up- and re-skilling the workforce is an important element of this proposal and the Skills Agenda as a whole. It also puts forward EU level actions to support VET reform and clear quantitative objectives.
The proposal is accompanied by a Commission Staff Working Document.

• Commission proposal
• Factsheet on Vocational Education and Training

The Skills Agenda calls for more attention to Skills for Life (action 8). The Commission, together with Member States, will work on new priorities for the European Agenda for Adult Learning to complement the renewed European cooperation framework in education and training and to support the achievement of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Enabling everyone to participate in learning: Individual learning accounts (action 9).
The Commission will assess how a possible European initiative on individual learning accounts can help close existing gaps in the access to training for working age adults and empower them to successfully manage labour market transitions.

Finally, the Skills Agenda sets ambitious objectives for adult learning by 2025:

• 120 million adults in the EU should participate in learning every year;
• 14 million adults with low qualifications in the EU should participate in learning every year;
• 2 million jobseekers or one in five should have a recent learning experience;

230 million adults should have at least basic digital skills, which covers 70% of the adult population in the EU.