The European Employment and Social Rights Forum 2026 brought together EU institutions, member states, social partners, civil society, researchers, and employers to stress-test a shared question: can Europe stay competitive while protecting people through rapid technological, demographic, and geopolitical change. The programme moved from high-level direction, including the Union of Skills, the Quality Jobs Act, the fair labour mobility package, and the first EU anti-poverty strategy, into practical breakout discussions on what delivery looks like in real labour markets, sectors, and communities.
The Forum treated “social Europe” less as a set of principles and more as an operating model, partnership-based, evidence-led, and increasingly judged by measurable outcomes. Across panels and sessions, speakers repeatedly returned to the same pressure points: skills gaps and skills under-utilisation, the need for adult learning at scale, the role of workplaces as learning environments, the importance of fair mobility with enforceable rights, and the requirement to address poverty and resilience as core economic and democratic priorities, not side agendas.
The first day
Roxana Mînzatu, Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, European Commission, opened the EU Employment and Social Rights Forum 2026 by setting a clear line that ran through the day, Europe’s competitiveness agenda has to translate into security and opportunity for people. That framing carried into the opening speech by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who described the Forum as a live example of Europe’s social partnership model, trade unions, employers, governments and civil society in the same room, working from the premise that “economic progress and social rights go hand in hand.” Anchoring the argument in first principles, she cited Konrad Adenauer’s idea that “the economy should serve the people and not the people the economy,” then linked competitiveness to daily realities, wages, jobs, security, and Europe’s capacity to shape AI and the digital transition without losing strategic industries.
Ursula von der Leyen also leaned on recent crisis delivery as evidence that coordinated EU action can protect jobs and keep skills in place. She recalled the rapid roll-out of SURE and said it “protected 40 million jobs,” then pointed to NextGenerationEU as a second step that supported recovery and accelerated the clean and digital transitions. The message was not that competitiveness is a goal in itself, she explicitly rejected that, calling it the foundation that sustains a social Europe. From there, she set out three deliverables that framed the rest of the day’s programme: completing the Single Market, investing in skills and quality jobs, and addressing the affordability crisis, particularly housing. In practical terms, she described a push to reduce fragmentation, including a proposed “28th regime” to make cross-border business activity easier without putting labour standards “into question,” and “EU Inc” as a streamlined company structure, including an ambition to enable digital registration “within 48 hours.” For workers, she announced a fair labour mobility package planned for the autumn, and illustrated why, citing obstacles such as slow recognition of qualifications and administrative barriers that block free movement in practice. On skills, she framed the political offer in simple terms, “skills are the bridge between uncertainty and opportunity,” and connected this directly to a forthcoming Quality Jobs Act. On affordability, she described housing as a pressure point with labour-market consequences, and argued that action is needed to prevent housing insecurity from becoming a structural barrier to opportunity.
The keynote intervention by Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister of Italy, Dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics, and Global Affairs (remote live intervention), narrowed in on the Single Market and labour mobility as competitiveness infrastructure. He argued for a stronger “European pride” narrative and a people-centred interpretation of market integration, insisting that “the single market is the people.” He made the case that labour mobility should carry the same weight as other Single Market freedoms, because mobility strengthens productivity and helps allocate talent where it is needed. At the same time, he flagged the gap between the legal right to move and the real ability to move, naming barriers like restrictive recognition systems and practices that suppress wages or restrict switching jobs. Importantly, he insisted that a credible Single Market also has to respect the “freedom to stay,” meaning people should not feel that Europe works only for those who can move. His bottom line was consistent with the Commission President’s framing, a stronger, more coherent market is not a technical detail, it is a condition for quality jobs, social cohesion, and Europe’s ability to compete.
The first thematic block, Quality Jobs and Fair Labour Mobility, opened with a video message from Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice-President and Minister of Labour and Social Economy, Spain, who placed the debate in a high-stakes political context. She warned that labour rights and collective bargaining are often among “the first victims” when democratic norms weaken, and argued the EU “cannot respond to this moment by lowering the bar.” Her intervention defined “quality work” as stability, dignified wages, health and safety (including mental health), and time, including the right to disconnect. She argued that enforcement is decisive, “rights without inspection and sanctions are just empty words,” and pushed for implementation of the Digital Platforms Directive so platform work is not built on precariousness as a business model. She also cautioned against policy choices that, in her view, weaken corporate accountability in value chains, presenting this as incompatible with an EU agenda that claims to defend quality employment.
The panel discussion brought the tensions into operational detail, with Li Andersson, Member of the European Parliament and Chair of the Employment Committee, Esther Lynch, General Secretary of European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Markus J. Beyrer, Director-General at BusinessEurope, Alice Burks, Director of People Success, Deel, and Menno Bart, Head of Policy Advocacy, Adecco Group testing where quality jobs, mobility and competitiveness align, and where they clash. Esther Lynch framed a quality job as something that delivers “security,” “progress,” and “the chance to get ahead,” while warning that instability can be disguised as flexibility, producing what she described as chaos for workers who cannot plan care, time, or income. Li Andersson argued that the Quality Jobs Act expected later in the year will be judged on ambition and enforceability, particularly around AI-driven work practices, algorithmic management, psychosocial risks, and the regulation of subcontracting and labour intermediaries. Markus J. Beyrer stressed that “quality jobs are created by competitive companies,” and argued that Europe’s industrial base and productivity trajectory matter directly for job quality, while also calling for clarity and simpler compliance in cross-border operations, particularly for smaller firms. Menno Bart argued that competitiveness and job quality can reinforce each other if Europe invests in skills and broadens access to social protection beyond traditional employment patterns, and he made a concrete proposal that member states should allocate a higher share of GDP to adult learning to match the rhetoric of lifelong learning. From the perspective of cross-border hiring, Alice Burks described skills scarcity and speed as defining pressures, and highlighted compliance complexity as a barrier for both employers and workers, explaining why employer-of-record models are increasingly used to manage payroll and legal obligations across jurisdictions.
Roxana Mînzatu returned after the break with “Prepare, protect, empower people in times of change,” positioning preparedness as the practical method behind the policy package. She confirmed three Commission deliverables and their timelines as they were discussed during the day, a Quality Jobs Act by the end of the year, a fair labour mobility package in the autumn, and the first EU anti-poverty strategy in 2026. She framed free movement as a promise that must not lead to exploitation, underpayment, or abandonment, and she linked preparedness directly to AI’s disruption of job content and skills needs, including changes expected by 2030. To make anticipation operational, she described building stronger capacity inside the Commission to integrate labour-market and skills data, so policies can respond faster and with more precision. In the Q and A that followed, she connected the trust question to the workplace reality of AI-enabled monitoring, assessment, and discrimination risks, arguing that if institutions fail to protect dignity at work, the political consequences will show up quickly in public trust and democratic resilience.
The second thematic block, The Fight Against Poverty, started with a live Q and A featuring Vincent Kompany, Head Coach at FC Bayern München and Founder of BX Brussels (remote live intervention), who argued that sport can function as social infrastructure for inclusion and opportunity, not as an add-on. He described BX Brussels as a platform that builds confidence, values, and practical bridges into the world of work through mentoring, exposure to employers, and support for real pathways like internships. His core point was cohesion, sport creates shared spaces where young people meet across backgrounds, build discipline and teamwork, and see possibility where their environment often signals closed doors. He also argued that inclusion needs structure, not only goodwill, and called for frameworks that help initiatives scale and cooperate rather than remain isolated.
That set the scene for the panel “Can Europe deliver on its 2030 promise?” with Petre-Florin Manole, Minister of Labor, Family, Youth and Social Solidarity, Romania, Aleksandra Gajewska, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, Poland, Marie Toussaint, Member of the European Parliament, Co-Chair of the Intergroup on Fighting Against Poverty, Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and Maria Nyman, Secretary General of Caritas Europa. Olivier De Schutter argued that poverty has changed character in ways that policy still underestimates: work no longer reliably protects people from poverty, and growth alone is no longer sufficient to reduce poverty. Petre-Florin Manole described Romania’s constraints bluntly, including deficit pressures, and outlined priorities around in-work poverty, minimum wage dynamics, and minimum inclusion income, while stressing the need to move beyond cash transfers toward accessible services. Aleksandra Gajewska presented Poland’s approach as targeted and measurable, combining benefits, services, minimum wage increases and data-driven indicators, and insisted social spending cannot be treated as optional in budget debates. Marie Toussaint pressed participation and coherence as the hinge points, arguing that people experiencing poverty must shape policy design, not only be consulted, and that anti-poverty measures must connect with housing and quality jobs if the 2030 promise is to be credible. Maria Nyman reported a clear trend from frontline services, the rise of the working poor, increasing demand from younger people, and more complex needs requiring legal, psychosocial and administrative support, alongside funding and coordination that remains too fragile for the scale of need. The panel’s sharpest question captured the direction-of-travel issue in plain language, are we “building people that are suitable for the economy,” or “building an economy that is suitable for the people?”
The Council perspective came next, with Marinos Moushouttas, Minister of Labour and Social Insurance, Cyprus, presenting the priorities of the Presidency on social rights and employment as a programme built around “fair and safe employment for social justice.” He put deliverables and calendar dates on the table, including EPSCO discussions on AI and job quality, skills as a cross-cutting priority linked to labour-market resilience, steps to support workers affected by global and technological disruptions, and a focus on fair labour mobility. He also pointed to progress ambitions on coordination of social security systems and reinforced occupational safety and health as non-negotiable, including work on protective standards. On poverty, he aligned the Presidency with the development of the EU anti-poverty strategy in 2026 and highlighted child poverty prevention, early childhood education and care, and long-term care as core priorities that link social justice with long-term prosperity.
The day closed with a fireside chat, “Breaking the cycle: why investing early on in life pays off,” with Sidsel Marie Kristensen, CEO of the LEGO Foundation, and Mario Nava, Director-General, Directorate-General for Employment, Social Rights and Inclusion, European Commission. Mario Nava steered the exchange back to the day’s central logic, if Europe wants to break poverty cycles and strengthen competitiveness, it has to invest early and at scale. Sidsel Marie Kristensen explained the LEGO Foundation’s funding model, stating that 25 percent of LEGO Group dividends go to the Foundation, and described its focus on children in vulnerable situations, particularly through education and early childhood. She cited widely used research claims to make the prevention case, including the scale of brain development in early years and the strong social and economic returns associated with early investment, then linked this to practical delivery questions like childcare quality and workforce skills in early-years services. She also argued for play-based learning as a skills engine, building adaptability, resilience, creativity and social-emotional skills that matter even more in an AI-shaped society, and she stressed that scale requires partnership, not isolated pilots, “we cannot save the world alone.”
In his closing remarks, Mario Nava pulled the threads together into three policy tracks that defined Day 1: quality jobs, fair labour mobility, and poverty reduction, with skills as the connective tissue across all three. He highlighted the Forum’s scale of participation and framed it as a signal of urgency, then closed on a practical note, the next phase is delivery, aligning institutions, member states, social partners, civil society and employers around policies that are enforceable, funded, and measurable, because that is the test of whether Europe’s social model remains a strategic advantage in an era of rapid change.
The 2nd day
Moderator Ali Al-Jaberi opened Day 2 by setting a practical frame for participation, noting that the programme consists of three rounds of breakout discussions and encouraging active audience involvement across sessions. He also confirmed access features for the day, interpretation in English, French, German and Spanish, alongside international sign language, before welcoming Ylva Johansson, Chair of the European Skills High-Level Board, and Mario Nava, Director-General, Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL), European Commission, for the morning fireside chat. Mario Nava picked up directly from Day 1’s conclusions, recalling that discussions on quality jobs, fair labour mobility, and poverty reduction converged on one common lever, stating that skills are the glue across all three areas, and marking a concrete milestone for the agenda, noting it was one year since the European Commission adopted the Union of Skills package in its first 100 days.
In response, Ylva Johansson balanced optimism with a clear diagnosis of what blocks progress. She described the most motivating feature of EU-level work as the moment when Europe decides to act together, because when it does, it can move mountains. At the same time, she named a persistent obstacle: Europe struggles to see the full picture, comparing fragmented problem definitions to 27 blind people describing an elephant from different angles. On the 2030 training target, which Mario Nava summarised as 60% adult participation compared to current levels still below 40%, Johansson argued for significant change without disruption for its own sake. She outlined two immediate investment priorities, raising the quality of basic skills in schools and making massive investments in adult learning. She then added two shifts she sees as essential for delivery: employers need to focus on using the skills they already have inside firms, and education providers need to test outcomes against labour market reality, not only exams, asking whether graduates can actually do the job and whether employers see training as fit for purpose.
The exchange then moved from targets to delivery architecture, with Mario Nava pressing what the High-Level Board can realistically change, and Johansson answering with a model-building ambition. She was explicit that the board cannot impose a revolution across member states, but it can incentivise and inspire change, including a stronger European approach to valuing people’s capabilities, calling for a better model for human capital. She also sharpened the inclusion dimension, arguing that skills policy is inseparable from school experience and social mobility, real good teachers can move mountains, while warning that too many children experience education as exclusion rather than growth. Across the remainder of the conversation, she returned to three forward actions that set the tone for Day 2: build learning into work rather than treating education as a separate episode, make learning how to learn a core competence because job content evolves quickly, and develop mixed financing for adult learning across individuals, employers, collective agreements and public budgets, since the scale of investment needed will not come from any single source. Mario Nava linked this back to the Forum’s broader competitiveness logic, reinforcing that skills development is both an economic input and a social stabiliser, and closed by sending participants into the breakout programme with a practical message that the board’s work will be judged the same way the Forum is, by whether it moves from shared diagnosis to scalable action.
Paul Guest, Moderator-Consultant, Orientra, opened the first Pact for Skills session with a clear signal that the room had shifted from interest to urgency, calling it a full house and joking that skills are suddenly top of the list. He framed the Pact for Skills strand around private sector investment in skills and tackling labour market shortages through partnership, then borrowed a line that had dominated Day 1 and made it the session’s anchor: skills are the bridge between uncertainty and opportunity. When participants were asked to name Europe’s most pressing digital skills challenge, Paul Guest noted that AI did not immediately dominate the word cloud. Instead, the first wave of concerns centred on digital literacy, responsible use, and the pressure of constant change and agility, a reminder that the digital gap remains as much about foundations and judgement as it is about frontier tools.
From the regional policy perspective, Esther Rommel, Regional Minister, Provincie Noord-Holland, argued that competitiveness, cohesion and the green transition are converging on one constraint: Europe’s future depends on skills. She positioned Noord-Holland as a testbed and delivery engine, describing a region of about three million people and a diverse economy, from industry and logistics to energy, food, maritime activity and digital services. She highlighted familiar bottlenecks, persistent shortages in technical profiles, fast-moving green and digital transitions, and well-intended projects that struggle to scale. Her response is a practical operating model rather than a strategy paper. She described the 2030 Noord-Holland manifesto as a regional mechanism to move from fragmentation to shared purpose. The core diagnosis was governance and execution: skills systems fail when actors work in parallel, while success comes when purpose, governance and execution are aligned. She outlined how the manifesto brings employers, sector organisations, vocational and higher education, public authorities and labour market services into the same delivery structure. In discussion, she stressed the approach is built around practical pathways, with businesses working with schools to train both students and adults, and with a strong push on recognition so skills and certificates travel more easily, including the reality that some companies are building their own in-house education structures to keep up with demand.
Jürgen Siebel, Executive Director, Cedefop, translated the urgency into labour market evidence. He cited that more than half of Europe’s adult workforce needs digital upskilling or AI training, and warned that training depth remains too thin, noting that a large share of digital training lasts a week or less. He argued AI should be treated as a cross-cutting megatrend rather than a niche, because it affects jobs across skill levels. At the same time, he cautioned against exaggerated job loss narratives, arguing that occupations are bundles of tasks and technology typically reshapes work rather than erasing it outright. Two gaps dominated his intervention: the mismatch between need and provision, with workers reporting strong demand for AI skills while AI-related training remains limited, and the mismatch inside jobs, where many roles do not fully use the skills people already have. That is why he returned to the backbone required for scale: data is not intelligence, intelligence is making sense of data, then using it to steer both training supply and the design of quality jobs. Looking ahead, he connected this to demographic reality, an ageing workforce and rapid growth in health and care employment, reinforcing his conclusion that adult learning, guidance, validation, recognition and financing have to become an ecosystem rather than a side programme.
The industry lens from Thomas Grandjouan, Head of EU Government Affairs and Policy, Kyndryl, underlined why the skills issue is now sitting at boardroom level. Introducing Kyndryl as an IT infrastructure services company spun out of IBM, operating with about 70,000 employees across 21 countries, he described the company’s 2025 survey of 3,700 CEOs, CIOs and CTOs as showing how quickly AI is changing workforce strategy. In that dataset, a large majority said AI will reshape their workforce, but a minority felt ready, and many reported gaps in the human and cognitive skills required to manage the shift. He highlighted a pattern that matters for execution, misalignment at the top, with CEOs and tech leadership often holding different views on the depth of the skills gap, which blocks coherent workforce planning. In contrast, Kyndryl’s pace-setting organisations focused on practical behaviours that the session kept returning to: skills visibility, learning delivery, and trust, including tracking employees’ skills and having a plan to close gaps, using external expertise to accelerate training and embed AI into roles, building employee trust through transparency about goals and risks, and putting ethical frameworks in place so AI is deployed safely and lawfully. On implementation, he offered two concrete examples: reskilling more than 10,000 employees away from repetitive tasks after automation, and preparing the wider workforce for agentic AI, where low-code and no-code tools allow many more roles to build and govern AI-driven processes. The implication matched the rest of the panel: Europe’s next skills wave is not only about training more people, it is about using skills better, making workplaces learning environments, and building partnership models that SMEs can access, otherwise the risk is a two-tier skills economy.
The second part of Pact for Skills: Future skills needs and developments shifted from diagnosis to delivery, bringing in complementary perspectives on how training is being built to respond to fast-changing digital demand. Maud Sacquet, Head of EU Public Policy, LinkedIn, opened with LinkedIn’s Economic Graph, describing it as a digital map of the labour market built from platform activity across more than 1.3 billion members, 71 million companies, and 15 million jobs at any given time. Her topline signal was mixed but actionable: hiring remains sluggish compared to pre-pandemic levels, yet AI-related work is expanding quickly, with companies creating large numbers of AI-related roles and a surge in data-centre jobs linked to AI infrastructure investment. She also flagged the geography of AI competition, describing AI engineering talent as more likely than average to move cross-border, and pointing to European hubs such as Ireland and Germany as talent magnets in her referenced dataset. The key implication for training and recruitment was speed of change: she cited analysis suggesting that a substantial share of skills in most jobs will change between 2015 and 2030, and argued employers are increasingly prioritising AI literacy alongside durable human capabilities such as strategic thinking, communication, and adaptability.
Where LinkedIn provided labour-market signals, Vangelis Makris, Team Leader, AKMI International, described what delivery looks like inside vocational education and training and EU-funded project ecosystems. He presented an Erasmus Plus Centres of Vocational Excellence project focused on AI-powered vocational skills, framed as a response to AI becoming an everyday tool across roles, from administration to customer service, logistics and training design. He warned that the pace of change widens labour shortages and deepens inequality unless upskilling becomes faster, more practical and more inclusive. Positioning AKMI International as a major private VET provider in Greece, he outlined the AI for VET initiative as a pan-European model built on a consortium of 26 partners across 11 countries and 18 NUTS2 regions, combining training providers, employers, clusters, public actors and research institutions. The design is deliberately practical: mapping regional AI-related gaps and starting points, then translating that into short, mobile-friendly learning modules in multiple languages, with sector priorities including wholesale and retail, professional services, health and social work, education, and hospitality. His most concrete policy message focused on what AI literacy should mean at scale: not coding as a baseline, but the ability to use tools safely, ask good questions, verify outputs, understand limitations and bias, and manage data protection implications.
The Q and A tightened the focus on who risks being left behind, and what changes in hiring behaviour might help. Asked directly, Vangelis Makris identified at-risk groups as workers in routine roles, adults with low digital confidence, SMEs in less advanced innovation ecosystems, people in remote areas, and underrepresented groups including women in AI pathways. Maud Sacquet pointed to a shift in employer behaviour that could counter exclusion if applied seriously, growth in skills-based hiring. She described recruiters increasingly searching for candidates based on skills rather than only degrees, diplomas, or narrow networks, arguing this broadens candidate pools, supports diversity, and helps ease labour shortages. When challenged on the reliability of platform data, she clarified that LinkedIn does not rely on a single signal such as self-declared skills alone, but combines multiple indicators across roles and skills patterns, and cross-checks methodology through collaborations with institutions such as the OECD. The session closed on a central thread that matched Day 2’s opening fireside chat: keeping the digital transition human-centred depends on pairing technical AI skills with durable capabilities like communication, critical thinking and adaptability, so people feel equipped to work with the technology rather than displaced by it.
In the opening segment of Pact for Skills: Closing the skills gap for a competitive Europe, Paul Guest reset the room for a three-part structure: first, how businesses can help deliver future-ready skills; second, a conversation looking outward to the EU neighbourhood and candidate countries; and third, two project contributions focused on the health and care workforce. He then handed the floor to Manuela Geleng, Director for Jobs and Skills, DG EMPL, European Commission, who framed the session as both a stocktake and a push for more delivery capacity under the Union of Skills. She reminded participants that the Pact for Skills, launched in 2020 because nobody can do it alone, has reached scale, citing over 4,000 members, 20 large-scale partnerships, 22 regional partnerships, and 25 training commitments, and said the Union of Skills strategy requires the Pact to become more efficient and stronger, including an ambition to double commitments.
The first panel brought the business perspective into focus with Ben Butters, CEO, Eurochambres, Christopher Frieling, Director for Advocacy and Public Policy, SEMI Europe, and Jakub Stolfa, President, Automotive Skills Alliance. Ben Butters argued that the key shift over the past decade is that the debate is no longer whether businesses should engage with education and training, but how they do so effectively. He described chambers of commerce as both policy shapers and practitioners, noting that a large share of chambers are involved in education and training and many deliver VET directly, from apprenticeship systems and training centres to SME upskilling and career guidance. For Eurochambres, the Pact’s added value is its ability to convert policy ambition into effective solutions through public-private cooperation. He stressed that to remain credible it must stay SME-friendly, light and nimble, and better connected to funding, including safeguards for Erasmus Plus and a dedicated budget line for vocational education and training and apprenticeship mobility.
From the high-tech sector angle, Christopher Frieling described the Pact for Skills as a strategic instrument for Europe’s semiconductor capability, not only a workforce programme. Speaking from the perspective of the Pact for Skills for microelectronics, he said sector-level skills intelligence has helped quantify gaps and sharpen messages to policymakers, citing an estimate that by 2030 the sector could be short by 65,000 people without a different approach. He stressed that collaboration is difficult precisely because companies compete for the same scarce profiles, which is why the Pact’s value lies in providing a platform to collaborate on shared tools such as skills intelligence and coordinated actions that no single firm would undertake alone. He also linked the agenda to geopolitical resilience, arguing that rebuilding production capability without rebuilding skills is not feasible, and that skills shortages in critical supply chains now affect Europe’s economic security as much as its competitiveness.
Jakub Stolfa reinforced the Pact’s role as an enabling structure that makes collaboration possible in practice, calling it an alliance of willing that helps companies, training providers, social partners and regions speak a common language and move from commitments to results. He argued the key test is impact, whether the Pact produces workers with the right skills across sectors, regions and company sizes, and he pushed for stronger system-wide alignment between business and education and training, describing the current moment as a dual transformation: an industrial revolution alongside an education and training revolution. In response to the Union of Skills ambition to double Pact commitments, Ben Butters cautioned that targets alone are not enough and warned against turning the Pact into a symbolic agreement, insisting it must keep its practical value for companies through clarity of purpose, visible outcomes, and mechanisms that connect participation to talent pipelines, training design support, funding access and policy shaping. Manuela Geleng closed the segment by translating the panel’s messages into next steps for Pact governance: strengthen delivery tools including blueprints and Centres of Vocational Excellence, connect sector-level skills intelligence to the emerging EU skills observatory for comparability, and make it easier for companies to pledge through a more integrated framework, including work to bring the alliance for apprenticeships under the Pact so commitments on apprenticeships, upskilling and reskilling reinforce each other instead of competing.
The second segment of Pact for Skills: Closing the skills gap for a competitive Europe shifted the lens to the EU neighbourhood, with Paul Guest clarifying that the discussion concerned candidate and potential candidate countries, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Ukraine, and Kosovo. He then convened a rapid conversation between Pilvi Torsti, Director, European Training Foundation (ETF), and Salvatore Nigro, CEO, JA Europe, on how skills identification and delivery can be strengthened across the neighbourhood, and how the flow of learning can work both ways. Pilvi Torsti described ETF as the EU’s skills for global Europe arm in the neighbourhood, combining system monitoring and analysis, foresight, and policy advice. She emphasised that skills work requires mixed methods, data tools and structured stakeholder input, particularly because contexts differ widely. A recurring theme was that the skills agenda is shared, but risks are amplified, including sharper underutilisation of talent and heightened sector vulnerabilities, especially in areas exposed to disruption and shocks.
Salvatore Nigro brought the perspective of an organisation built explicitly to close the gap between schooling and work, framing JA Europe’s model as learning experiences delivered through business volunteers inside education systems. He described JA Europe’s current scale as reaching 23 million young people globally each year and 7.5 million young people annually across Europe and its neighbours, supported by a large volunteer base and a blended funding model, summarised as 60% private sector funded and 40% public sector funded. He highlighted programme architecture that connects employability, entrepreneurship and financial capability, including EU-supported initiatives with multiple partners focused on digital skills and sector needs. In the Western Balkans, he pointed to Albania as an example of system integration, describing a model where JA programmes are embedded across school levels and backed by significant investment, and reinforced his headline claim that the issue is no longer a gap but a canyon, arguing that skills development must start earlier and focus on application, not only knowledge acquisition.
When the discussion turned to what is most urgent across the neighbourhood, the emphasis moved beyond a single digital gap and into a differentiated picture by country and sector. Salvatore Nigro argued that digital skills are often the number one demand, but priorities vary, citing Ukraine as comparatively strong on digital and STEM while pointing to financial capability as an area where more support is needed. He described Türkiye’s challenge as much about re-engagement as skills, including high shares of NEETs and school dropout, which makes labour market inclusion harder even where some skills pathways perform well. Pilvi Torsti responded to the question of whether neighbourhood engagement is one-way, insisting it is a two-way street, and gave concrete examples of mutual learning: Western Balkans and Ukraine show different patterns in women’s participation in STEM than several EU member states, while parts of the neighbourhood lag behind the EU in work-based learning structures, where workplace learning needs to become a core mechanism. She also described practical preparation for enlargement through policy transfer and peer learning, including supporting implementation of the Youth Guarantee by convening member states and partner-country administrations and stakeholders around operational models, costs, and governance choices.
The session closed with one audience question that sharpened the inclusion debate, asking why disadvantaged groups remain under-activated and how models that work, such as supported employment and job coaching, can be scaled. Salvatore Nigro answered from the prevention angle, arguing that post-crisis systems can create comfort zones that weaken activation, while later swings toward reduced social protection can widen exclusion, leaving young people and vulnerable groups stranded between extremes. He pointed to early intervention as a reliable lever, describing evidence from comparative evaluation in underserved communities showing reduced dropout and higher attainment among young people exposed to progressive learning models early. Paul Guest closed the segment by signalling what the conversation had surfaced for the Pact for Skills narrative: neighbourhood cooperation is not charity, it is capacity-building with shared benefits, and the practical challenge is to convert evidence, partnerships and programmes into scalable pathways that reduce the canyon, not just describe it.
In the breakout Resilient Societies: Strengthening social policy through research, Marie Sina, Europe Economic Correspondent, Deutsche Welle, anchored the discussion in the forthcoming European Partnership on Social Transformations and Resilience (STR), designed to feed evidence into policy across future of work, social protection and essential services, education and skills, and fair transition towards climate neutrality. The frame was set sharply by Prof. Maja Göpel, Founder, Mission Wertvoll, who argued that resilience is an agency question grounded in social capital, trust, norms, and networks that make people willing to act when circumstances shift. Drawing on findings she cited from the Ipsos Populism Survey (June 2025), she highlighted rising perceptions that the system is broken and warned that grievance and mistrust are being weaponised through narratives that the economy is rigged and elites are decoupled from the rest of society. Her challenge was to stop avoiding the hard questions people feel are brushed over, notably will we have enough, will we share enough, and who is we, alongside a critique of confusing means and ends, including treating GDP growth as the default yardstick and presenting digitalisation or AI deployment as automatically beneficial. She insisted competitiveness must be defined by outcomes, arguing Europe needs to make explicit whether it is pursuing a high-road or low-road strategy and cannot compete its way out of a race to the bottom.
The session moved from diagnosis to delivery through Dr. Malwina Gębalska, Candidate Partnership on Social Transformations and Resilience Coordinator, National Science Centre Poland, who presented STR as a long-horizon mechanism for applied, interdisciplinary research rooted in social sciences and humanities and explicitly co-created with policy and societal actors. She described STR as planned for 7 to 10 years, starting in 2027, with partners from 24 countries and funding currently at 185 million, with an ambition to reach 200 million through national allocations and expected Commission co-funding. She emphasised STR’s operational model: transnational calls for proposals, cohorts of projects around shared topics, a built-in focus on policy uptake, and infrastructure for collaboration via workshops, seminars, and training to help researchers and policymakers work together. A key bottleneck was explicit: STR aims to improve access to administrative data, since in many countries access is difficult, and better access is essential if research is to keep pace with rapid change. She also issued a straightforward invitation for additional partners to join and for ministries and funders to engage.
Panel reactions clarified what resilience requires in practice and where the research-policy interface breaks down. Dr. Koen Vleminckx, Director Research, Federal Public Service (FPS) Social Security, Belgium, focused on trust as both outcome and method: institutions rebuild confidence by showing they truly care and by speaking honestly about realities and choices, but that depends on research that is usable under real legal and political constraints. He argued research often misses decision-making reality when it does not translate findings into concrete policy options. He also highlighted the need for more timely data that reflects today’s realities, hybrid careers, changing family composition, and consecutive crises, and pointed to administrative data as a crucial route to faster insight. Bert De Wel, Global Climate Policy Coordinator, International Trade Union Confederation, reinforced that resilience and fairness are distribution questions, not messaging exercises. He framed just transition as the core trade union lens, arguing trust hinges on clarity about who wins and who loses, and on protecting the tools that make fair distribution feasible, especially collective bargaining, which he warned is increasingly under pressure. He also cautioned that in climate negotiations resilience can become an acceptance of defeat if it displaces mitigation and binding obligations. A repeated insistence was that workers must be actors in research, not merely subjects, because ownership of findings shapes whether policies land on the ground.
From the university side, Prof. Alessandro Perego, Vice Rector for Sustainable Development and Societal Impact and Full Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Politecnico di Milano, argued the bridge between science and policy is built through sustained real-world engagement rather than one-off dissemination. He described social responsibility as integral to the university mission and gave concrete examples: off-campus programmes embedded in districts facing housing fragility, migration and gentrification, and a Milan network of ten food recovery hubs that redistributed about 1,000 tons of food, roughly two million meals, with the university supporting coordination and learning. Throughout, Marie Sina kept the discussion operational, pressing for what evidence workers need to trust transitions will be fair, and testing public appetite for welfare-state instruments that reduce dependency on markets, including the question of whether it is possible to decommodify economic security, such as housing, from the job market.
Three forward actions emerged clearly from the exchange, and STR was repeatedly positioned as a delivery vehicle rather than another debate forum. First, shift research investment toward policy-usable outputs, including options and trade-offs, faster evidence cycles, and structured policy-uptake pathways that ministries can act on, not only publishable findings. Second, build the data backbone, especially streamlined and ethical access to administrative data and shared standards so research reflects current labour markets, household realities and crisis dynamics, rather than lagging indicators. Third, treat co-creation as a rule, not a pilot, by integrating social partners, NGOs and public authorities from design to dissemination, so affected groups own the insights and can trust the implementation, rather than experiencing research as extraction.
Conclusions
Across the Forum, the central throughline was that Europe’s social model is being treated not as a parallel track to competitiveness, but as the condition for sustainable competitiveness. Day 1 set the political and policy frame: Ursula von der Leyen linked competitiveness to tangible social outcomes and delivery tools (Single Market deepening, skills investment, affordability and housing), Enrico Letta argued labour mobility must be treated with the same weight as other freedoms while protecting the “freedom to stay,” and Yolanda Díaz drew a firm red line against “simplification” that weakens labour, environmental, and equality protections. The quality jobs and fair labour mobility panel then translated this into operational tensions, how to modernise rules for AI, algorithmic management, psychosocial risks, subcontracting and enforcement, while using digital tools to simplify cross-border work without opening space for social dumping or exploitation.
Day 2 reinforced the same architecture but shifted from what to do toward how to deliver at scale. The fireside chat with Ylva Johansson and Mario Nava anchored the Union of Skills in three practical levers, stronger basic skills, major adult learning investment, and workplaces as learning environments, financed through mixed models across individuals, employers, collective agreements and public budgets. Pact for Skills sessions provided concrete delivery patterns, regional operating models, skills intelligence, skills-based hiring, short modular training tied to real tasks, and explicit attention to who risks being left behind (SMEs, routine roles, remote areas, underrepresented groups). The “Resilient Societies” breakout then tied it back to legitimacy, trust is the bottleneck for transitions, and the STR partnership is presented as a structured attempt to bridge science and policy through co-created research, better data access, and “policy uptake” pathways, so evidence becomes usable action rather than another report.
What does the forum mean for us
We take away from the Forum that skills delivery is now judged by execution quality, inclusiveness, and measurable impact, not by policy intent, and that future skills work has to combine AI literacy with durable human capabilities, better job design, and rights-based frameworks. For GEYC, especially given our cross-department experience, this gives us a clear positioning: we can convene stakeholders into SME-friendly, modular, evidence-led pathways that connect training to real work, strengthen skills utilisation and mobility readiness, and embed inclusion as a design requirement, not an add-on. As a Pact for Skills member, we can contribute by piloting partnership formats, producing skills intelligence outputs, testing micro-credentials and microlearning approaches, and strengthening youth-focused transition supports that align with the Union of Skills logic, while also building credibility through the Forum’s repeated standards: clarity on outcomes, enforcement where rights are at stake, and co-creation with workers, employers, civil society, and the communities most exposed to labour market disruption.