In March 2025 the European Commission launched the Union of Skills, its strategy for the skills Europe needs to stay competitive, fair and resilient. Behind the policy language is a simple diagnosis: too many young people leave school without solid basic skills, too few adults keep learning, and qualifications still stop at national borders. Here is what the strategy contains, why it matters for young people, and where youth work fits in.
Why a skills strategy now
The Union of Skills was presented on 5 March 2025 as one of the flagship initiatives of the Commission’s first hundred days, alongside an Action Plan on Basic Skills and a STEM Education Strategic Plan. It builds on the European Skills Agenda, the European Education Area and the European Research Area, and it feeds the EU’s wider competitiveness agenda.
The starting point is uncomfortable. In the 2022 PISA study, roughly one in three 15-year-olds in the EU did not reach the basic level in mathematics, and about one in four fell short in reading and science. Employers across Europe report shortages in technical, digital and green skills, while many adults have not taken part in any training since they left school. The strategy’s answer is to treat skills as a shared European project rather than a purely national one.
What the strategy contains
The Commission groups its actions into four areas, held together by a new governance layer:
- Building skills for quality lives and jobs. Raising basic skills in literacy, mathematics, science and digital competence, with a Basic Skills Support Scheme piloted in schools, a push for STEM subjects that also attracts more girls and women, stronger vocational education and training, and more support for teachers and trainers.
- Upskilling and reskilling throughout life. A Skills Guarantee pilot for workers in companies that are restructuring, so that people are retrained before they lose their jobs, plus more flexible, shorter learning paths for adults.
- Skills that circulate across Europe. A Skills Portability Initiative so that a qualification or a competence proven in one Member State is understood and accepted in another, making it easier for people to move and for employers to recruit across borders.
- Attracting, developing and retaining talent. The Choose Europe action to attract researchers and skilled professionals from around the world, and measures to keep talented people in Europe.
To steer all this, the Commission set up a European Skills High-Level Board of employers, trade unions, education providers and Member States, informed by a European Skills Intelligence Observatory that gathers data on which skills are in demand where. The existing Pact for Skills, with more than 2,500 member organisations and the goal of upskilling 25 million people by 2030, is reinforced as the strategy’s main partnership tool.
The targets for 2030
The strategy comes with measurable goals for the end of the decade:
- Fewer than 15% of 15-year-olds underachieving in literacy, mathematics and science, and fewer than 15% of eighth-graders in digital skills.
- At least 15% of pupils performing at the top level in literacy, mathematics and science.
- At least 45% of students in initial vocational education enrolled in STEM fields, at least one in four of them women.
- At least 32% of higher-education students in STEM fields, at least two in five of them women.
- At least 5% of students in ICT doctoral programmes, at least one in three of them women.
What it means for young people
For a 16-year-old in Vienna or a 24-year-old graduate in Riga, the strategy will mostly be felt indirectly: through schools that get extra support for basic skills, through apprenticeships and study programmes that are easier to combine with a stay abroad, and through a job market in which a certificate from another EU country counts for more. Two points deserve attention from young people themselves.
First, basic skills are no longer only about reading and counting. Digital competence, the ability to judge information online and the confidence to keep learning are treated as foundations, not extras. Second, the strategy explicitly values skills gained outside the classroom. The portability agenda relies on tools that youth work has used for years, such as the Youthpass certificate that documents what participants learn in Erasmus+ youth projects, and the European framework of key competences for lifelong learning.
Where youth work fits in
Youth organisations are not the main addressees of the Union of Skills, but they are part of the ecosystem it describes. Non-formal education reaches young people who have switched off from school, and it builds exactly the competences employers now rank highest: analytical and critical thinking, resilience, teamwork, communication and the curiosity to keep learning. Our weekly labs, Model United Nations and Model European Parliament simulations, youth exchanges and training courses are, in this sense, skills programmes, and Youthpass makes that learning visible.
For youth workers, the strategy is also an invitation. The Pact for Skills and the new skills partnerships are open to civil-society organisations, and the basic-skills agenda needs partners who know how to work with young people who have fewer opportunities. If you want to bring your organisation into these conversations, or to design a project that connects youth work with the skills agenda, write to us.