The European Year of Skills

On May 9th, the European Year of Skills has finally been launched! With a symbolic event taking place on Europe’s day, the launch celebrated Schuman’s declaration by setting the path for a year that’s already delivering good practices and results. 

In the presence of the Vice-President of the European Commission for Promoting our European Way of Life, Margaritīs Schinas, the launch event opened up by laying the foundation for the European Year of Skills (EYS) and framing the activities for the rest of the year. In an opening message addressed to the audience, President von der Leyen reiterated that “investing in training is not just the right thing to do, but it’s the smart thing to do!”. 

...as a skill festival!

The event went on to highlight some of the results that on-the-job training can achieve. Some case studies from young adults were presented, with special appraisal to those situations where publicly-funded training helped young adults to get out of unemployment and/or land better jobs in emerging sectors. 

The EYS is part of Europe’s effort to keep up with technological change and give better, right skills to the workforce. It is not by chance that Mr Schinas underlined the vital need for green and digital skills in coming years: this year is here to serve the development of new skills for the jobs that will emerge in the near future. While it was clear that the main focus of the EYS is not so much just on education or learning but rather on granting labour market participation through skills development, the target group of this massive action is undeniably the adult population: the EU aims to help overcome labour market challenges.

If you want to learn more about the activities foreseen for the EYS, make sure to hop on the official website: here you can find training opportunities, events, and all sorts of information to get you up-to-speed with this exciting year and its activities.