The Pact for Skills welcomes a new Regional Skills Partnership in the EURADRIA region, focused on tackling labour shortages, improving skills intelligence, and supporting small and medium-sized (SMEs) and micro-enterprises through targeted upskilling and reskilling efforts across borders.
The EURADRIA region spans Italy’s Friuli Venezia Giulia and Slovenia’s Goriška, Obalno-kraška, and Notranjsko-kraška regions. The local economy is built on SMEs, which often struggle to find skilled workers. While the area has a long history of cross-border cooperation, labour mobility is still hindered by regulatory differences, fragmented services, and limited coordination between public employment systems.
Sectors such as construction, tourism, agriculture, digital technologies and personal care face persistent skills shortages, especially among young people and seasonal workers. At the same time, SMEs often lack the resources to identify and meet their skills needs.
The ambitions
The EURADRIA Regional Skills Partnership aims to strengthen labour market integration by making cross-border mobility easier, fairer and more effective. It will do this by improving access to data, supporting skills matching, and helping employers co-create training offers with education providers.
A key ambition is to ensure that upskilling and reskilling are part of a shared, long-term strategy that responds to the needs of workers, SMEs and public institutions alike. The Partnership will promote inclusive growth by improving access to training and services, especially for underrepresented groups.
The commitments
To meet these goals, the Partnership will analyse labour market data to identify skills gaps and guide upskilling strategies. It will support SMEs in articulating their needs and co-developing training with education providers.
It will also aim to align skill classifications across borders, improve cooperation between employment services and training providers, and ensure digital access to relevant information for both workers and employers.
By encouraging collaboration across public and private sectors, the Partnership will build a stronger, more resilient cross-border labour market that benefits all stakeholders in the region.
Find out more in the Regional Skills Partnership Declaration below:
Regional Skills Partnership EURADRIA
