Credit: MENEJ

After a first conference-debate in October 2021, the stakeholders of the study carried out by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), National Skills Strategy in Luxembourg, met again on 25 April 2022, in the presence by Luxembourg's Minister of National Education, Children and Youth, Minister of Higher Education and Research, Claude Meisch, and Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Economy and solidarity, Georges Engel.

130 participants (representatives of ministries and public administrations, professional federations and chambers, trade unions and training organisations) discussed, refined and supplemented the preliminary recommendations issued by the OECD following the October exchanges in particular.

The recommendations revolve around four priority areas:

  1. the creation of continuing vocational training adapted to the labor market:
    • improve the consistency and accessibility of the continuing vocational training offer,
    • improve the relevance and ensure the quality of the continuing vocational training offer,
  2. measures to promote lifelong learning and upskilling/reskilling:
    •  improve career guidance and counselling, learning and continuing professional development,
    • improve financial incentives for continuing vocational training, upskilling and reskilling,
  3. talent attraction and retention:
    • facilitate the recruitment of foreign talent according to the needs of the Luxembourg labor market,
    • facilitate the integration of foreign talents and their families into Luxembourg society and the labor market,
  4. skills data governance:
    • improve skills data collection,
    • foster complementarity and synergies between skills data within and beyond Luxembourg.

The analyses and recommendations from these two events will be published as an OECD Skills Strategy - Assessment and Recommendations report in October 2022.

Minister Meisch congratulated the OECD for the remarkable work accomplished since the start of the study and recalled that “the study will inform us about the skills of the future and thus give us the necessary means to prepare them”. “The strong participation shows that reflections on skills are essential for Luxembourg. I thank all the participants for their active contribution, which will allow us to define a sustainable skills strategy – essential for Luxembourg”, added Minister Engel.

The study aims to propose a long-term strategy in order to fill the gaps in terms of skills (skills gaps) in Luxembourg. It is carried out by the OECD, in close collaboration with the country's social partners, and supervised by an interministerial team (composed of the Ministry of National Education, Children and Youth, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the Ministry of Labour, Employment and the Social and Solidarity Economy, and the Agency for the Development of Employment).