Skills for a compet­i­tive Europe.

On 5 and 6 March, experts from various sectors met for the third time at the European Social Forum (ESF) to tackle one of Europe's biggest challenges: equipping people with the right skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow while strengthening Europe's competitiveness. From insightful keynote addresses to dynamic debates, the forum prepared the ground for action in the areas of skills and capabilities, employment and competitiveness.

A changing labour market: Which skills are in demand now

In a rapidly changing world of work, driven by technological progress, it is essential to prepare employers and employees for the upcoming changes at an early stage. The Director General of the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (EMPL), Mario Nava, emphasised that 50 per cent of all employees do not yet have basic digital skills. This will inevitably lead to a shortage of skilled labour in future professions. In addition, one million employees retire, leaving the labour market every year, which also means that one million social security contributions are lost. The European Commission will therefore focus more on the reskilling and further training of workers in its Union of Skills in order to remedy the labour shortage and ensure that all workers have the necessary education and training.

But which skills are currently considered essential and roughly how many are there? Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, provided an answer. For example, his company classifies 41,000 different hard and soft skills. The most popular of these currently include image and video generation, automated feature engineering, dynamic AI, intelligent agents and large language models.

Union of Skills

There was a consensus that the demands on all professions will change significantly in the future and that new skills will be required. The participants agreed that a forum such as the ESF is the right place to discuss this challenge. This is where changes are anticipated and proposed solutions are discussed.

The "Union of Skills" was also presented as part of the event. It emphasises that vocational schools and further training institutions are also a cornerstone of change management in addition to the necessary social investments in early childhood, school and university education. It is important to invest in people's qualifications at all stages of life. The basic and further training employees enrolled here are often older and on the second educational pathway, but come directly from the labour market and know which skills they currently lack. Although costs would be incurred by these measures, it would ensure that not only the younger generation would be prepared for the necessary skills, but all (especially older) employees.

In addition to these fundamental investments in education and further training, the acceptance of qualifications acquired in third countries or other Member States must also be recognised universally and without bureaucratic hurdles in the Member States.

Setting the course for Europe's future

However, there were many other areas that were the subject of lively discussion. Among other things, the second action plan on the European Pillar of Social Rights focussing on the transition from jobs in traditional industry to the "green" industry. This is particularly challenging as there is a significant difference in wage levels in both branches of industry. Furthermore, the geographical barriers to mobility were discussed and how the various EU initiatives (EURES, EESSi, ESSPASS, europass) can help to overcome them.

Finally, the various options for a flexible transition to retirement were presented. Demographic change and the risk of longevity require new paths to retirement. Early communication between the pension authority and future pensioners reduces uncertainty about the pension amount and increases predictability.

With the European Pension Information System "European Tracking Service", the EU is taking a promising approach here by making it possible to retrieve individual pension information across all national Pillars of Old-age Provision and from all participating Member States. The advantage for the population is obvious as savings decisions can be adjusted in an emergency if information about the pension amount is available at an early stage. German Pension Insurance already offers an equivalent product for Germany in the form of the "Digitale Rentenübersicht".