Green Skills and Knowledge Concepts: Labelling the ESCO classification
The European Union (EU) is pursuing the ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. To transform the economy for a sustainable future, Member States plan to stimulate the creation of green jobs and continue cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Since the release of the European Green Deal in 2019, the EU has presented a set of policies and measures to drive investments and efforts towards a just and inclusive transition.. As the transition is bringing fundamental transformations in the European economic model, new jobs are created, while some jobs are replaced, and others are redefined. The Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion’s response is described in the European Skills Agenda, a five-year plan published in 2020 to strengthen sustainable competitiveness, ensure social fairness and build resilience. Action 6 of the Skills Agenda emphasises that the green transition requires investments in skills of people and presents a set of concrete actions to support the acquisition of skills for the green transition, including through the definition of a taxonomy of skills for the green transition. The taxonomy should allow the statistical monitoring of the greening of professions. The European Classification of Occupations, Skills ad Competences (ESCO) responded to this call to action. ESCO skills and knowledge concepts needed to live in, develop and support a society which reduces the impact of human activity on the environment (Cedefop, 2012) are now labelled as green. This report provides information concerning the labelling process, and guides ESCO implementers in their use of ESCO green concepts.