The four associations representing the automotive sector (ACEA, CECRA, CLEPA and ETRMA) wrote a letter to European Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, in response to the Commission’s Communication on the ‘European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience’ published last Thursday.
The letter can be found here.
- The Communication is a much welcomed step and the entire automotive value chain looks forward to work closely with the Commission on its implementation.
- In particular, the four associations support the road towards a Skills Pact, which they hope will support the automotive sector to work with a clear agenda to boost the availability in the labour market and in the workforce of emerging skills needed to enable the sector’s green and digital transition.
- The industry warmly welcomes the reference to the need to set up large-scale partnerships to work on priority areas within the framework of the Green Deal and the sector’s digital transition. In this context, it is paramount that any such initiative concerning the automotive sector will be based on the work and scope of DRIVES.
- Skilling and up-skilling of the existing workforce and bridging the skills gap between the needs of the industry and the training offer is of utmost importance at all levels of education.
- Bringing in the new needed skills and retraining the current workforce are two challenges which the sector cannot master alone. In this sense an initiative for a sectorial up- and re-skilling framework for the automotive value chain maximising industry competitiveness, job retention and new job opportunities would be a welcomed – as also underlined by the first release of the DRIVES Roadmap.
- Finally, as recognised by the Communication, these initiatives need to be supported by consequential financing. This would require the mobilisation of existing and new large-scale public-private funds that will support re- and up-skilling acceleration. All existing European funding should be rapidly assessed and allow to support these efforts (eg European Social Fund, EIB etc) to facilitate structural changes in the sector.
SOURCE: ACEA
