Two years ago, on November 10th 2020, the European Commission launched the Pact for Skills. As a flagship initiative under the European Skills Agenda, it aims to ensure sustainable competitiveness, social fairness, and resilience. The Pact promotes the creation of partnerships among key stakeholders from European industries, all with the goal of upskilling and reskilling the workforce. The Automotive Skills Alliance (ASA) was established by the industry, education and training provides, social partners, other stakeholders and regions and municipalities as an initiative addressing the skills gap particularly in the automotive-mobility ecosystem, where the digital and green transitions require a change of mindset, as well changes of skills.
Within the automotive-mobility industry, the ASA functions as an umbrella organization, facilitating cooperation on skills agenda among a diverse network of stakeholders. By connecting different types of partners the ASA contributes to shaping the workforce of the future. Today, the ASA connects more than 93 partners motivated to ensure the digital and green transition will leave no one behind. The goal of the alliance is to ensure the upskilling of 5% of the automotive workforce each year for seven years, resulting in roughly 700,000 people being upskilled throughout the ecosystem.
The ASA functions as a partnership, connecting stakeholders on various levels as well as across different aspects of the skills agenda in the automotive-mobility ecosystem. Since the launch of the alliance, partners have been collaborating under the umbrella of four main Working Groups focused on Horizontal Issues, Communication and Dissemination, Skills Intelligence, and Regional Implementation. Several dedicated technical working groups function within the area of Skills Intelligence. The working group on Regional Implementation facilitates and supports the sharing of best-practices among partner regions, while supporting the creation of regional transformation projects focusing on up- and re-skilling activities. Through this collaboration, pilot regional projects were supported in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), Stuttgart (Germany) and the Moravian-Silesian region (Czech Republic).The success of the ASA regional projects has been recognised by the European Committee of the Regions in their annual Report on the State of Regions and Cities. The TRAUTOM project of Moravia-Silesia is mentioned as “a best-practice example of a regional multi-level dialogue strategy for a regional transformation using the Just Transition Fund mechanism”. Similarly, the European Commission commended the ASA structure and organisation as a an example of establishing coordinating arrangements in its Guidance Handbook on setting up partnerships under the Pact for Skills.
The ASA paves the way by facilitating the exchange of best practices and promoting up-/re-skilling activities and skills agenda topics, thus contributing to the attainment of new skills and competencies among the workers of the automotive-mobility ecosystem. This process is essential to ensure both a Just Transition and to boost the competitiveness of European industries. Together with our partners, we look forward to supporting cooperation on the skills agenda across Europe to ensure a transformation that works for all.