FIEC Newsletter – 11 Μαρτίου 2025

On 6 March, the European Investment Bank (EIB) dedicated a significant part of its annual Forum to “strengthening support for affordable and sustainable housing across Europe”. In a series of panels – involving amongst others the Chairwoman of the new European Parliament Special Committee on Housing (HOUS), MEP Irene Tinagli, the President of the European Committee of the Regions, Mrs. Kata Tütto, the Chairman of the new European Commission “Task Force on Affordable Housing”, Mr. Matthew Baldwin, and FIEC President, Piero Petrucco – the invited experts touched upon some of the many challenges to be tackled in order to provide sustainable and affordable housing to all European citizens.

It was clear from the discussions that the landscape is extremely diverse and therefore a “one-size fits all” approach cannot work. President Petrucco explained that the construction industry has a great role to play in innovating and digitalising the construction process to boost productivity. However, he said, “the industry is extremely fragmented, with a vast majority of SMEs, and any EU and national initiative has to take this into account“. Indeed, the EU level can bring coherence in the various approaches and significant support in leveraging public and private money to boost national and local initiatives. This is what EIB President, Nadia Calvino, and EU Commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, presented during the session opening: the creation of a new pan-European Investment Platform for affordable and sustainable housing. With this new platform, the EIB plans investments of around 10 billion euros over the next two years. The EIB also launched a housing portal, a one-stop shop to support final beneficiaries to access advice and finance.

On 5 March, FIEC and EFBWW (European Federation of Builders and Wood Workers), the European social partners for construction, adopted a Joint Declaration on labour and skills shortages at the occasion of their Social Dialogue Meeting.

The Joint Declaration is a result from a workshop on labour and skills shortages in construction organised on November 2024 in the framework of the DESOCO 2 project. In this joint declaration, FIEC and EFBWW share key messages to European and national stakeholders. They stress the importance of a strong sectoral social dialogue to identify suitable solutions to tackle labour shortages and skills gaps, with a bottom-up approach.

FIEC and EFBWW recognise that the construction sector suffers from a lack of awareness and will therefore continue to work to improve the image of the sector. The European social partners for construction also highlight the need to strengthen further the cooperation with Vocational Education and Training Centres, to encourage the reskilling and upskilling of all workers and to develop quality apprenticeships.

The European Commission presented a flagship initiative, a Communication on the Union of Skills, on 5 March. The Union of Skills is built around four key strands:

Building skills for quality jobs and lives

Many of the initiatives are relevant to the construction sector. First, the Union of Skills aims to develop an attractive and innovative Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. A European Strategy for VET will therefore be presented in 2026.

With regard to up-skilling and re-skilling, the Communication highlights that it is a shared responsibility and that social dialogue at all levels is key to achieving it. The European Commission will launch in 2025 a Skills Guarantee Pilot to develop further workers’ career in other sectors and/or companies.

The European Commission wants also to facilitate portability of skills and qualification by developing a common European framework of automatic recognition of study qualifications and learning periods abroad in school, VET and higher education (in 2027).

Facilitating the mobility of VET learners and workers will also be further developed. Finally, the European Commission will facilitate the attraction and integration of skilled third-country nationals, in particular through the implementation of the EU Talent Pool.