Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU began discussions on the proposal ‘2023, European Year of Skills’ on Thursday 16 February in Strasbourg.
Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs gave its mandate to Cypriot rapporteur Loucas Fourlas (EPP) on 6 February (see EUROPE 13115/15). MEPs had insisted in particular on the inclusion of the most disadvantaged groups in the projects supported by this European Year and on advancing the acquisition of skills in green and digital technologies.
The Year of Skills 2023 was the focus of an event organised by the Swedish employers’ unions on 16 February, in the presence of the European Commission.
The later hoped that the co-legislators would agree quickly and recalled that the aim of the 2023 Year is to boost the European skills strategy, which will help reskill 6 million people and focus on digital and green technology skills.
New rules coming on ‘green skills’
This is what EU leaders asked for on 9-10 February when they adopted their conclusions on the ‘Green Industrial Deal’, recalled the Commission’s Director-General for Employment and Social Affairs, Joost Korte. The Commission will also present specific provisions on skills in March as part of the new rules on State aid and targeted investment schemes.
The Swedish social partners, for their part, presented the Swedish system of skill development, which was the subject of two major agreements in 2022, between new flexibilities for companies to retain certain skills and greater employability of workers with new opportunities for skill development, they explained.
A model that can be shown as an example to other European countries and which also owes its success to the great “autonomy and room for manoeuvre” granted by the government, commented Therese Guovelin of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)