Launched: June 2025
The challenge
Driven by the need to address climate change and promote sustainable economic growth, the automotive-mobility sector is transitioning to a greener and digital future. The European Union’s ‘Fit for 55’ package mandates a 100% reduction in emissions by 2035, accelerating the shift towards zero-emission vehicles. However, this transition affects 7.5 million jobs across Europe, particularly in regions dependent on traditional automotive manufacturing.
Beyond environmental goals, digitalisation is reshaping production, requiring new skills in automation, AI and smart manufacturing. Without the necessary support, many regions risk economic decline and job losses. Therefore, addressing skills gaps to support workers is crucial for a just transition.
Another key challenge is to ensure that the transition is a fair one that provides opportunities for workers and businesses to adapt. Addressing these issues requires coordinated efforts between governments, industry and training providers to protect jobs and economic stability.
The ambition
The Regional Skills Partnership for the Automotive Regions’ Twin Transition aims to build a skilled workforce that will lead the automotive-mobility sector into a greener and more digital future.
The Partnership will create a strong and responsive framework, empowering automotive regions across the EU to address skills and workforce challenges during the twin transition.
This will be achieved by fostering collaboration between regions, ensuring that skills development aligns with both EU and regional policies. By strengthening cooperation, it supports the automotive sector’s transformation and fosters a more connected and resilient workforce.
The Partnership also focuses on identifying workforce-related problems at a regional level, facilitating the sharing of best practices to find common solutions, and mobilising resources effectively.
Additionally, the Partnership aims to support detailed regional impact analyses and EU-wide labour force assessments, providing insights to align skills with industry needs. It enhances skills intelligence by improving data collection and strategic planning, while fostering training innovations through advanced courses and train-the-trainer solutions tailored to emerging technologies.
The commitments
The Regional Skills Partnership has committed to a set of actions to help drive the success and growth of the Pact for Skills.
It will begin by developing a collaborative partnership between key stakeholders across the Automotive Skills Alliance's (ASA) regions, local training providers and universities. This will strengthen interregional cooperation, ensuring that skills education aligns with industry needs to build a future-ready workforce. Concrete examples include organising regular group meetings, workshops and study visits in 2025 to enhance knowledge-sharing amongst stakeholders.
Furthermore, stakeholders will be able to connect with each other via the Skills Hub, a user-friendly and dynamic platform which offers a catalogue of training courses to develop the skills needed for the automotive sector of the future. Regular working group meetings will be organised alongside workshops, conferences and good practice exchange sessions addressing specific regional needs.
Finally, the Partnership will help strengthen access to and increase awareness of funding for skills initiatives. It will organise roundtables, which will bring together industry leaders, educators and social partners to explore funding opportunities, and accelerate investment in quality education and training through continuous upskilling and reskilling activities.
The impact
The Regional Skills Partnership will strengthen sectoral skills strategies, enhance regional capacity-building and build on the ASA’s role as a key facilitator in the EU automotive-mobility ecosystem.
The Partnership will tap into the ASA’s vast network of industry leaders, education and training providers, social partners and regional stakeholders to support regions in developing upskilling and reskilling activities, as well as boosting competitiveness and innovation through skills-focused collaboration.
By strengthening collaboration between regions, the Partnership will drive the transformation of the automotive sector, thereby ensuring a resilient workforce.
View the document below to learn more about the Regional Skills Partnership for the Automotive Regions’ Twin Transition.
