The Pact for Skills welcomes a new Regional Skills Partnership in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in France. Home to over 800 companies with a skilled workforce of 18,000 professionals, the region generates €3.5 billion in revenue a year, making Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes the French leader in technical and functional textiles. Dedicated to improving competitiveness and sustainability in the textiles industry, the Partnership focuses on regional strategies to strengthen skills development and tackle workforce shortages in the sector.
The textile sector faces challenges that threaten its sustainability and competitiveness. One of the primary concerns is the sector’s ability to stay competitive amidst the rise of energy costs, limited access to raw materials and the increasing demands of the ecological transition.
In addition, the sector faces work-related challenges, with 63% of companies struggling to fill key roles. An ageing workforce, shifting skills demands and limited training capacity have intensified the challenge.
The ambition
The Regional Skills Partnership will create a resilient and adaptable textile workforce that can respond to ongoing changes.
The Partnership will help textile companies anticipate and adapt to evolving skills needs driven by economic, technological and societal changes. In addition, the Partnership will promote lifelong learning through apprenticeships and will support professional integration and inclusion across the sector.
The Partnership will also work to raise awareness of careers in textiles – attracting, guiding and retaining people through training programmes. Together, these efforts will strengthen the sector’s resilience and competitiveness. These ambitions are driven by key objectives to boost the sector’s adaptability and European reach.
Finally, the Partnership will position Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes as a leading European textile region by contributing to the TCLF Skills Alliance and EU initiatives such as the Pact for Skills and the TCLF SkillBridge.
The commitments
To meet its goals, the Partnership will design new training frameworks and transform existing training courses to meet companies’ needs. These will be focused on sustainability-related objectives, such as recycled dyeing, eco-design and training future trainers.
The Partnership will also monitor emerging trends, such as adopting AI, to stay ahead of technological trends. Tools developed alongside Textil’IA – an initiative by Première Vision Association – are already helping textile companies increase performance through innovative solutions.
Furthermore, to promote lifelong learning, the Partnership will expand access to training and offer programmes in textile recycling and technical textiles to support upskilling across the workforce.
Find out more in the Partnership Declaration below:
Details
- Publication date
- 10 July 2025
- Author
- Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion