A year-long European Skills & VET Week campaign began on 2 June with an event in Brussels.
The campaign was launched during the 20th Cedefop Brussels Seminar — titled "Skills for Europe’s Competitiveness" — and was co-organised with the Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission informed on Wednesday.
European Skills & VET Week is described as a pan-European, “bottom-up” initiative bringing together policymakers, social partners, public authorities and education and training providers.
VET stands for vocational education and training — courses that prepare people for specific jobs.
Juergen Siebel, Executive Director of Cedefop, said in a recorded video message that the EU faces “a convergence of pressures” including technological transformation, demographic change, climate change, productivity gaps, and skills and labour shortages.
He added that adult learning and vocational education and training are “strategic assets” for responding to those challenges.
Commission and Cyprus representatives back the campaign
The European Commission has made job quality and the attractiveness of VET priorities under the Union of Skills strategy and an upcoming VET Strategy, it noted.
Georgi Dimitrov, a member of the Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu, said the week is “a valuable opportunity to raise awareness and help VET achieve the recognition and importance it deserves.”
Elias Margadjis, Director for Secondary Technical and Vocational Education and Training at Cyprus’s Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth, said Europe’s prosperity and resilience will depend on investing in “skills, knowledge, and innovation.”
