On 19 June, the European Commission published its European Semester Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) and Country Reports (CRs), known as the ‘Spring Package’. The Semester is the EU mechanism used to ensure coordination across economic and social policies amongst Member States, with the CSRs representing the corrective course prescribed by the Commission to ensure Member States meet its annual economic and social priorities. The 2024 Semester guides Member States’ investment and reforming of education and training, and, different from its past editions, it contains a Social Convergence Framework. This mechanism aims at identifying gaps across EU Member States in different areas of the European Pillar of Social Rights as well as making the European Semester more focused on social policy, offsetting the previous concern that economic concerns always trump social concerns in the European Semester process.
Addressing skills shortages: for the benefit of industry or the benefit of the learner?
The underlying theme of this edition of CSRs is competitiveness. Across all Member States, the preamble to the CSRs reflects on labour and skills shortages which are impacting the well-functioning of key industries while limiting the capacity of the EU Member States to be competitive. Across multiple Member States, employer surveys are used to highlight how they are not finding adequately skilled workers to fill in their quota. This translates to recommendations linked to skilled shortages in almost all EU Member States that received education and training recommendations.
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