The EC presents a proposal on a “Strong Social Europe for Just Transitions”, preparing the future Action Plan to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights.
With its policy proposal “Strong Social Europe for Just Transitions”, the European Commission (EC) presents reflections on how social policy should help deliver on current challenges and opportunities, mainly the transitions of climate-neutrality, digitalisation and demographic change. The proposal builds on the European Pillar of Social Rights (adopted in November 2017), where the “right to quality and inclusive education, training and lifelong learning” was enshrined in the first of its 20 key principles.
Now, the EC proposes several initiatives towards the implementation of the Pillar of Social Rights, including some that are related to education and training:
- revision of the 2016 Skills Agenda for Europe, including a proposal for a European Vocational Education and Training (VET) recommendation (1st quarter of 2020);
- update of the Digital Education Action Plan (2nd quarter of 2020);
- proposals to reinforce the EU Youth Guarantee (2nd quarter of 2020);
- further development of the objectives of the European Education Area (3rd quarter of 2020);
- establishing a new education and training cooperation framework (3rd quarter of 2020).
In 2021, the EC intends to launch an Action Plan to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights and submit it for endorsement at the highest political level. In view of preparing this Action Plan, the EC, inter alia, launched a consultation this month to seek feedback from EU countries, regions and partners on their plans to deliver on the Pillar’s objectives and their views on the way forward.
On 14 January, the EC also presented a proposal for the Just Transition Mechanism as part of the European Green Deal Investment Plan (see SwissCore article). The Just Transition Fund should support vulnerable regions to deal with the green transition, e.g. in the domain of educating and skilling, re-skilling and up-skilling people of all ages.