Professional services in the green transition

Key points

The EESC:

1. contributes with this opinion to the joint effort to restore Europe's competitiveness and strengthen its industrial position, while enhancing the performance of European firms in the green transition;
2. recognises the fundamental role that professional services play in the green transition;
3. is concerned that the greening process may stall due to labour and skill shortages, skill mismatches, and increasing regulatory, administrative and cost burdens, as well as new challenges brought on by rapid changes in supply chains;
4. expects the changes in the dynamics of manufacturing supply chains to help reposition value chains and to encourage reshoring, with many companies considering bringing back production and services previously offshored to non-EU countries;
5. believes that the new vision for the Union of Skills needs to be implemented. Consistent reforms need to be carried out in education systems to adapt curricula to changes in the world of work, to support all relevant educational programmes (including STEM), to implement a new strategy for vocational education and training (VET), and to support teachers and improve coordination at EU level;
6. also recognises the need to encourage educational initiatives at both EU and Member State levels. This could involve specific financial incentives for VET courses aimed at greening professional services. It could also involve establishing EU-level academic courses to bring in new professionals or train existing professionals in sustainability objectives, and to promote both adaptation to and improvements in existing skills and jobs (upskilling and reskilling programmes). These initiatives could also create new skills for the green and digital transitions, that can be considered ‘twin transitions’, in that they go hand-in-hand and can reinforce each other;.
7. suggests targeting policies to support professional service networking in order to improve the operating scale of the related activities, properly accounting for each Member States’ specific characteristics;
8. believes that the skill gap could be closed by following the above suggestions and training skilled professionals within Europe, or by attracting professionals from outside the EU through policies and initiatives;
9. emphasises the important role that social partners, professional service organisations and other relevant civil society organisations play in successful and just green transition processes;
10. also highlights other challenges in the broad context of professional service provision, including barriers to qualification recognition, which will need to be lifted to help leverage professional mobility and address skill gaps. The EESC recommends continuous efforts in this field, also through follow-up opinions on these issues.