SOLIDAR Foundation Statement on the European Year of Skills

Today the European Year of Skills (EYS) kicks off with the European Year of Skills Festival. The EYS will run until May 2024, and aims to tackle the mismatch between unemployment and education. 

SOLIDAR Foundation applauds the attention that EYS will bring to education, training and lifelong learning. However, SOLIDAR deplores the way the European Commission framed education as being the sparring partner of the labor market. This perspective risks reducing education and training as merely providing skills for workers and to overlook the importance of key and transversal competences and skills that enable citizens to actively participate in society.  

Together with its members and partners SOLIDAR Foundation will strongly advocate to shift the focus away from the labor market and towards a lifelong and life-wide learning perspective, focusing on key competences and transversal competences.