EU VET Strategy – Employers’ input

Introduction

Employers broadly welcome the commitment in the Union of Skills initiative to develop attractive and innovative vocational and educational training (VET) systems in the Member States. Strengthening the position of VET is crucial to address skills shortages and mismatches as well as enhancing the labour market relevance of VET. It is important to make VET a more attractive educational pathway and to better align it with labour market needs.

In further developing its approach towards the VET strategy, it is important that the initiative does not point towards implementing European VET qualifications in parallel to national qualifications, which would risk undermining Member States’ education systems.

Employers also underline that it is not appropriate for the EU VET strategy, or other Commission initiatives, to propose an EU level right to training as the answer to addressing Europe’s skills challenges. Approaches to training provision and orientation are numerous and differ greatly from Member State to Member State and need to take into account national, regional, sectoral and local specificities and the role of social partners therein. The best way to support training provision in the Member States and to foster workers’ motivation to take up training opportunities is to foster social-partner led approaches at the appropriate levels.