Qualified labour “Europe's most important raw material”

Citation

(2005), "Qualified labour “Europe's most important raw material”", Education + Training, Vol. 47 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2005.00447bab.014

Qualified labour “Europe's most important raw material”

Qualified labour “Europe's most important raw material”

Qualified labour is the most important “raw material” for European economic success, according to the annual Congress of Eurochambers, the Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Participants at the event, held in Vienna, Austria, concluded that the association must play a greater role in promoting international co-operation on vocational training. Accepting that the EU had already done much in this area through the European training “passport” and mutual recognition of qualifications, one participant said: “Europe must have better vocational-training systems, and some of the larger EU member states could learn a great deal from some of the smaller ones”. Another participant said: “Let's stop moaning. We must act against the brain drain but also attract brains from elsewhere”.

The event, on the theme “A Competitive Europe in a Globalized World”, called upon European heads of state and government to be true to the promises they made in Lisbon to “make Europe the most competitive knowledge economy in the world by 2010”. Eurochambers President Christoph Leitl said: “If one reaches a 3 per cent or more economic growth rate and 1 per cent rise in employment annually over the next five years, 10 million new jobs will be created in Europe”. Jurgen Strube, President of the European employers' association, Unice, called for young people to be encouraged to start up in business.