EU Agencies have the know-how and the potential to support the European economy and society make the green transition happen. This was a key message of the Cedefop-Eurofound online knowledge-sharing seminar ‘Skills and quality jobs as drivers of a just green transition’ on 12 December, with experts from over 15 members of the EU Agencies Network on Scientific Advice (EU-ANSA).
Becoming a climate neutral economy by 2050 is one of the key targets of the European Green Deal, the EU’s growth strategy. The green transition is already changing employment, jobs, skills and training needs. Labour market research and high-quality skills intelligence – at EU, national, regional, local and sectoral levels – is instrumental.
Apart from achieving environmental goals and targets, the wider socioeconomic implications of the green transition must be considered to ensure it is just. Cedefop and Eurofound have been exploring the impact of environmental policy on skills, jobs, and vocational education and training (VET) for over a decade. Opening the event, Eurofound Executive Director Ivailo Kalfin called it ‘an example of good cooperation and sharing of expertise among the EU agencies.’
In his opening remarks, Cedefop Executive Director Jürgen Siebel echoed his counterpart and stressed that the seminar had a ‘crucial objective: to trigger exchange and discussion among Agencies. We hope to boost peer learning and enable the identification of synergies, common challenges and concerns for the road ahead.’
Cedefop expert Stelina Chatzichristou navigated attendees to the green observatory that encompasses the Agency’s ‘green’ work. Fellow expert Jiri Branka provided detailed information on Cedefop’s analysis based on online job advertisements. Eurofound’s Jorge Cabrita shared with EU-ANSA colleagues the Agency’s recent work on the role of social dialogue and job quality in the green and just transition and announced forthcoming work on those and other themes.
A panel of experts from the European Environmental Agency, EU-OSHA and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission discussed some of the key factors that Agencies should take into consideration in their work on the green and just transition in the short and the long term, such as the industry’s changing skill needs and the need to embed sustainability principles and goals from the design phase of policies and activities. Some similarities were identified with the countries where the European Training Foundation operates.
Adjustment and agility are necessary from the VET programme design level to the development of more comprehensive frameworks for skills and jobs in the green transition. The transition calls for a transformation of the state of play, so Agencies need to translate the implications into interactions and interdependencies between them.
The transition’s gender element, the urgency of considering vulnerable groups of learners and workers, as well as the health (physical and mental) and safety implications of the profound changes to the ways of production, new materials, new business models etc., were some of the points that gained traction.
Cedefop and Eurofound will assess the seminar outputs to inform the next steps of their collaboration in this thematic area that will include a policy brief and a social partners forum in 2024 on the impact of the green transition on skills and jobs.
