“Education and training systems have to equip citizens with high-quality skills in an inclusive manner.”
Prepared at the request of European Commission President von der Leyen, ‘The Future of European Competitiveness’ report by Professor Mario Draghi (the Draghi Report) lays out a clear diagnosis and provides concrete recommendations on how to address the skills gap in Europe by focusing on a broader range of skills than in the past, including:
- Digital Skills: Necessary for technology adoption, innovation, and AI development, particularly in data science, cybersecurity, and automation.
- Green Skills: Essential for sustainable economic transitions, including renewable energy, sustainable manufacturing, and resource efficiency.
- STEM and Specialist Skills: Crucial for high-tech industries and manufacturing, particularly in advanced engineering, biotechnology, and space technology.
- Transversal Skills: Including problem-solving, teamwork, adaptability, and project management, fostering a workforce capable of navigating complex business environments.
- Managerial Skills: Play an essential role for the adoption and productive use of new technologies and the optimal allocation of human capital
The ultimate vision is to lay the foundations for the creation of a ‘Union of Skills’ with a focus on relevant skills of high-quality, irrespective of where and how they were acquired.
Formal certification and recognition of these skills would need to be designed in a way that facilitates matching in dynamic and fast-evolving labour markets. Certification should become less reliant on formal education attainment, and more flexible and granular, implying the need to recognise and validate skills acquired through diverse learning pathways, vocational training, and work-based learning.
Micro-credentials and digital badges to demonstrate skills and competencies should also be considered and promoted. Finally, professional certificates issued across the EU should follow a uniform approach as much as possible to facilitate mutual recognition across Member States, as a real Single Market for skills, and as much as possible across different market segments for what concerns transversal skills.
Following the Draghi report, a Competitive Compass for the EU (EU Compass) has been created to guide the work over the next few years and lists priority actions to reignite economic dynamism in Europe. The EU Compass shall nurture Europe’s innate strengths, harness its resources and remove the barriers at European and national level. A Europe that:
- Remains home to cutting-edge scientific and research innovation
- Retains and attracts the world’s best talents and provides quality jobs for all
- Strengthens its global position and its unity through upwards convergence between regions
- Shines as a leading global investment destination and rewards risk and entrepreneurship
Both reports have highlighted the root causes hindering Europe’s competitiveness and that ‘Europe needs to redress its slowing productivity growth by closing the innovation gap’.
The challenge is twofold: Europe needs to close the innovation gap by fostering a dynamic start-up ecosystem, improving access to risk capital, and commercialising research. At the same time, it must bridge the skills gap by modernising education and training systems, promoting lifelong learning, and creating pathways for workers to adapt to evolving labour market demands.
Proposals to close the skills gap
The Draghi Report makes 12 proposals to address the skills gap:
- Collect and leverage granular data on skills needs, stocks and flows (‘skills intelligence’) to design skills policies.
- Revise curricula in light of changing skills needs.
- Improve and harmonise skills certifications common to all EU member states, recognising and validating skills acquired through diverse learning pathways, vocational training, and work-based learning.
- Rethink the design, funding and implementation of skills policies:
- dedicating a minimum share towards adult learning and vocational training;
- focusing on strategic sectors and occupations;
- including stricter requirements on the design, implementation and desired impact of the programmes;
- systematically evaluating and comparing the effectiveness of policy initiatives in skills within and across Member States via dedicated evaluation units.
- Focus on adult learning ensuring sufficient available funding by Member States and private organisations (including incentivising companies to allocate more resources to training, for example by offering tax benefits).
- Promote and reform vocational educational training (VET), in partnership with VET providers, employers, industry associations, and trade unions.
- Attract more highly skilled workers from outside the EU launching a new Tech Skills Acquisition Fund for a new EU-level visa programme; a large number of EU scholarships for undergraduate, graduate and PhD students; student internships and graduate contracts within participating research centres and public institutions.
- Reduce the misallocation of future talent, implementing programmes to support talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
- Address skills shortages in critical value chains.
- Promote managerial skills in SMEs by:
- creating accreditation systems and incentives to elevate the quality of managerial training;
- facilitating the acquisition of managerial skills through the use of vouchers to hire temporary managers.
- Improve the availability and working conditions of teachers.
- Increasing labour market participation.
How the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative is putting the Draghi report proposals into action
The EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative is one of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s (EIT) flagship programmes, designed to address the talent gap by training one million talents by the end of 2025 to develop a strong deep tech talent pool across Europe. And to date, our Pledgers have successfully trained over 980K talents (as of March 2025) towards this objective.
The Initiative offers stakeholders the opportunity to actively grow and become part of a dynamic ecosystem that advances deep tech education and training, while enhancing collaboration between academia and industry.
Calls for Training Proposals (Draghi Proposals 2, 4, and 5)
The Initiative’s various Calls for Training Proposals focus on the provision of deep tech skills training. Each successfully funded proposal is required to train an expected minimum number of talents to help mitigate the deep tech skills gap, foster creativity and innovation in curriculum design, and focus on empowering underrepresented groups.
Train the Trainer Programme (Draghi Proposal 6)
The Train the Trainer Programme is specifically designed to enhance the capabilities of educators in the fields of deep tech (DT) and Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E), to address the significant gap in the integration of deep tech and I&E content in higher education, and aims to build a robust community of well-equipped educators who can foster a more dynamic and integrated approach to teaching deep tech and I&E.
Course Catalogue (Draghi Proposals 5, 9, and 12)
The Initiative’s course catalogue has over 180 deep tech courses across 15 relevant deep tech fields, which offer a great opportunity for talents to improve their knowledge and expertise in their preferred areas of interest. Currently 16% of courses dedicated to Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (including big data), while courses on Advanced Computing/Quantum Computing, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Deep Tech, Advanced Materials, and Advanced Manufacturing complete the top five popular deep tech fields.
Talent Community (Draghi Proposals 5, 6, and 9)
The EIT Deep Tech Talent Community facilitates the path to career growth and fosters expertise in deep tech for adult learners in companies and on the job market, but also pupils and students of higher education with an interest in deep tech.
Additionally, Pledgers are required to provide data on talents trained and deep tech areas, which allows the Deep Tech Talent Initiative to collect, analyse, and provide dashboard reports training provided and areas of outstanding need, in accordance with Draghi’s proposal number one.
Partners
