Anna Ochmann, President of the ARTeria Foundation, participated in the conference ‘Establishing regional skills partnerships: lessons learned and success stories’, which took place online on 10 October 2024.
European regions are currently facing diverse and serious challenges, including persistent labour shortages and changing skills needs, particularly in sectors such as construction, healthcare and STEM, as well as demographic changes, particularly the ageing and declining working-age population.
The EU is addressing these issues through several key policy and funding initiatives. One of these is the European Skills Agenda, which aims to strengthen sustainable competitiveness, ensure social justice, build resilience, support the creation of quality jobs and address skills mismatches in the labour market, while supporting innovation at sectoral or regional level. Other initiatives include, but are not limited to, the Talent Booster Mechanism, which supports regions to attract, train and retain people with the necessary skills and competencies to mitigate the impact of the demographic transition.
Regional Skills Partnerships (RSPs) under the Pact for Skills play a key role in this effort, supporting up-skilling and re-skilling, thereby contributing to economic and social development. These partnerships bring together interlinked networks of private and public sector stakeholders in the regions to enhance competitiveness, innovation and economic growth.
The main objective of the conference was to hear from experts and discuss with various stakeholders from all over Europe to exchange ideas and foster cooperation focusing on their commitments to up-skilling and re-skilling at regional level.
The ARTeria Foundation is a member of the Pact for Skills and a signatory of the Creative Pact for Skills.
Pact for Skills is one of the flagship activities of the European Skills Programme. It aims to support public and private organisations to up-skill and re-skill so that they can prosper through green and digital transformation.