The Lifelong Learning Conference will take place on 17–18 April.

It will explore the core of lifelong learning and the way it can contribute to the individuals’ need to continuously adjust to their changing environments. The topics of internal motivation and institutional obstacles will be discussed, as well as the impact of specific developments, such as the digital and green transition, on lifelong learning.

More information: Lifelong Learning Conference

The Global Gateway High-Level Education Event will take place on 11 April.

The event will focus on the opportunities for education investments and cooperation under the Global Gateway agenda; share examples of results achieved, best practices and lessons learned through funding and partnerships; look at how to accelerate progress in the future.

To learn more/register: Global Gateway High-Level Event on Education

Adopted by the European Parliament on 13 March, the Artificial Intelligence Act – expected to enter into force in May – aims to regulate artificial intelligence applications based on their potential risks and level of impact. Education, vocational training, and employment are considered to be high-risk. To understand what it means concretely, we had interviewed Dragoş Tudorache, a Member of the European Parliament heavily involved in shaping the AI Act. 

"I believe [AI] is going to revolutionise the way education is carried out, with good and bad consequences. And our societies must have a proper debate about it."

ETF interview with Dragoş Tudorache

The closing event of the European Year of Skills – What comes next? will take place on 30 April. The event will provide an opportunity to ‘look back at the achievements of the year and reflect on the road ahead’.

For more information, visit the European Year of Skills website.

Throughout the year, the ETF has organised brainstorming events with key partners and stakeholders from EU neighbouring countries to capture their voices and bring their input to the final event of the European Year of Skills – follow Our journey to shape tomorrow's green and digital skills.

Although the ETF is at the cutting edge of the green transition, helping educational providers identify and teach green skills, for the last five years it has also been analysing and improving its own environmental impact.

In 2019, the ETF decided to implement an EMS (environmental management system) and started to monitor its CO2 equivalent emissions. A group of around 10 volunteers from within the organisation formed the EMAS Project Team (EMAS is the EU's flagship Eco-Management and Audit System).

Led by the ETF's Renata Vallome, the team started working on an Environmental Policy and drafted the Terms of Reference for hiring consultants to support the adoption of the EMS and the preparation for registration. The group now meets once a month, with various sub-groups working on specific aspects of ETF ecological credentials.

"We started the project when Greta Thunberg was waking people up. She was so young, and touched a deeper place than politicians could. Within the ETF various people were worried about the future of our planet, about climate change but also about our own CO2 emissions. And we had a director, Cesare Onestini, who was very keen to ride the wave and push this project."

There were many challenges. Although there was a desire to concentrate immediately on concrete remedies, there was a major amount of administrative work:

"We had to conduct an internal audit and implement an EMS," adds Vallome, "to map all procedures, documents and legislation, and to have a baseline to monitor our environmental performance. Only then could we begin to intervene."

The ETF was registered for both EMAS and ISO 14001 (the internationally recognised standard for environmental management systems) in 2021.

"Every year we have a specific audit looking at everything we're doing, checking the way we manage waste, the preparedness of the building, the compliance part."

"It's quite intense," Vallome smiles, "they are rightly looking in-depth at the situation and thanks to confrontation with auditors and their recommendations, we manage to continuously improve our system and our performance."

But it's work which is paying off. In the last four years, the ETF has reduced its CO2 equivalent emissions by almost 40%, from around 1,000 tons per annum to 602. Those emissions were mostly reduced by concentrating on energy consumption:

"We didn't change suppliers, but carefully managed the heating times, changed all the light-bulbs, reduced night-lights which were superfluous and the number of in-house servers..."

A recent pie-chart showing the source of the ETF's 2023 emissions indicates that half of CO2 equivalent pollutants are the result of conferences and overseas missions.

"Travel is something we cannot not do," Vallome admits. "Travel and networking in partner countries are very important, we travel a lot to meet stakeholders and so on. But we need to come up with a proposal to make these missions greener without touching the budget: taking direct flights instead of stopovers, using public transport where possible."

Another opportunity to reduce emissions is in the commuting habits of ETF staff. Vallome and her team have conducted two surveys about staff mobility but know it's not easy to square the commuting circle:

"There's only one bus, but we're investigating alternative possibilities like car-pooling and charging docks for electric bikes and vehicles."

The office space itself also presents challenges as the shape of ETF building is quite strange, with offices distributed along a corridor and two towers.

"In the past we've proposed closing part of the building to avoid having to heat up and light that part, to push for hot-desking, but the general opinion wasn't favourable. People consider their own office part of their habitat and find it difficult to leave their own space…"

"The biggest challenge is trying to change people’s behaviour. It requires both courage and a thick-skin. We're not afraid to be unpopular. When we decided to eliminate plastic bottles and replace them with water fountains, not everybody was happy. It was the same when we decided to have lower temperatures. You have to be bold enough to go for it, despite the negative reactions of people around you."

The ETF's building is now closed for part of August when many people (including cleaning, maintenance and canteen contractors) are absent and when air-conditioning costs, and emissions are very high. That closure has been extended to the first week of January, when staff often have children at home from school. That, too, reduces energy consumption and the associated emissions.

With the renewal of the EMAS registration this year, the ETF is taking another big step by enlarging the focus on sustainability. To mark this change, also the name of the project team has been changed to GEMS (Green Environment and Management for Sustainability).

“We have adopted a new Environmental Policy,” says Renata, “drawing inspiration from the commitments and objectives defined by the European Commission to contribute to the achievement of common and shared objectives on a path towards sustainability. An EU commitment which had an important impact on the strategic choices of European agencies is the EU commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050.”

GEMS sub-groups are also exploring the optimisation of resources, using greener utility companies, reinforcing the waste management system and looking at the installation of solar panels. The latter, in particular, requires significant infrastructural investment which, quite apart from the economic challenge, isn't always a convincing proposition considering the duration of the rental period.

The greening of public procurement is another area under examination.

"There's a toolkit for green procurement," says Renata, "and we're proposing the inclusion of a sustainability aspect in all tenders. In an ideal world, we would be able to impact society by designing the terms of reference and encouraging the market to harmonise with our requests..."

The ambition to "walk the walk" means Renata hasn't shied away from tough decisions. One of GEMS' sub-groups is considering to transition from the current calculation of emissions (using LCA, or life-cycle assessment) to the GHG (greenhouse gases) protocol. GHG's scope 3 calculations include all the value chain, both upstream and downstream, so the change is likely to reveal previously hidden emissions for which the ETF is, indirectly, responsible.

"We have to thank Pilvi Torsti, our current director, and management for their continuing support. They have always been engaged with this project, and this has been fundamental for its success. It means we have been able to make a big difference in diminishing our emissions. And their support will be far more important in this new phase, because moving from carbon reduction to actual carbon neutrality, eliminating that remaining 50%, is really quite tough," Vallome concludes.

"The need for skilled workers has never been so high. The need for the right work-life balance and quality jobs has never been so strongly felt in our societies. Social dialogue stands central in the work of the Belgian presidency," said Alexander De Croo, Belgian Prime Minister, on behalf of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, at the Tripartite Social Summit. 

The Tripartite Social Summit is a forum for dialogue between the EU institutions at president level and the European social partners at top management level. The summit is co-chaired by the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission.

Held on 20 March, the summit focused on "An economically and socially strong Europe to play its role in the world". The participants discussed issues concerning an industrial strategy complementing the green deal with quality jobs at its heart; a single market that delivers for enterprises and workers; and tackling skills and labour shortages.

Labour and skills shortages

Labour and skills shortages have been increasing in all EU Member States over the last decade. These shortages are driven by demographic shifts, the demand for new skills linked to technological developments and the green and digital transitions, the drive to develop further EU industrial sectors, defence and security needs, and challenges related to working conditions in some sectors and locations. The European Commission has identified 42 ‘shortage' occupations, with some differences across Member States.

On the same date, the European Commission presented an action plan to tackle those shortages, which is part of the EU's strategy to boost its competitiveness and enhance its economic and social resilience. The action plan is also a key deliverable of the European Year of Skills and a follow up to the Val Duchesse Social Partners Summit of January 2024. The European Commission has come forward with it, in cooperation with social partners, whose role is crucial to implement solutions to address these challenges. The plan sets out actions in five areas to be implemented swiftly at the EU, national, and social partners' levels, namely:

• supporting underrepresented people to enter the labour market; 
• providing support for skills development, training and education; 
• improving working conditions; 
• improving fair intra-EU mobility for workers and learners;
• attracting talent from outside the EU. 

Social dialogue and the ETF's partner countries

Within this context the ETF supports social dialogue in its partner countries. For the first time this year, with the support of Eurofound, the EU's Agency for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions based in Dublin, social partner representatives from the Western Balkan economies are participating in a Tripartite Exchange Seminar with a number of events taking place with dedicated time and space for social learning. The seminar aims to improve the capacity of social partners and governments so that they can engage and act effectively in social dialogue. They will engage with European-level social dialogue, establish and participate in new networks with EU Member States, and deepen their understanding of the importance of social partnership for the green and just transition. More details will follow throughout this year on those activities. More

At the recent Skills Fair on Quality Apprenticeships, organised by the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITCILO) with ETF support to promote the adoption of the ILO’s Quality Apprenticeships Recommendation, social dialogue was identified as one of the key aspects at the core of designing, implementing, and governing well-functioning apprenticeship systems.  

“Many issues related to apprenticeships require consensus building across the constituents of social dialogue, for example the rights of apprentices, cost-sharing modalities between companies and the public sector, and quality,” said Matthias Themel, ETF expert, who led the session on social dialogue.

“Adequate governance arrangements need to be in place, giving clear roles and responsibilities to the various institutions and stakeholders, including tripartite actors,” he added. 

On 20 March the European Commission launched an initiative to improve the working conditions for trainees and combat regular employment relationships disguised as traineeships; and by revising the 2014 Council Recommendation on a Quality Framework for Traineeships address issues of quality and inclusiveness, such as fair pay and access to social protection.