2023 skills agenda in Eastern Partnership region

Intensive consultations, meeting with new and old colleagues from five countries of the Eastern Partnership region in the end of 2022 under the umbrella of the ETF Skills Lab Project, "lost and found" organisations  – all this resulted in launch of five national Skills Labs in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Despite the different approaches to skills anticipation and development in different countries, variety of institutions (from national qualification agencies to educational providers and analytical centers), such meetings made possible to extract the similarities in topics and issues, crucial for building up the national  and regional skills agendas.

So, TOP five that are of interest in all countries are:

• Labour Market Intelligence conducting and correct using of data produced (with a special accent on the validation and trust to the analysis made by non-governmental institutions);
• Skills development in term of Life-Long Learning and continuous vocational education;
• Skills acquisition, including such issues as providers’ capacity, validation of learning results gained through informal and non-formal education;
• Soft skills needed for the variety of modern context (from digitalisation to circular economy);
• Skills for vulnerable groups: migrants, refugees, internally and externally displaced persons.

A lot of work to be done in 2023 and these challenging tasks make our professional life more interesting and needed both at the national and regional landscapes.