On 3 and 4 March 2026, the annual European Employment and Social Rights Forum will bring together policymakers, business leaders, academics, and civil society to discuss Europe’s top social and employment challenges and solutions.
This event will address the need to support adult learners to upskill and reskill through apprenticeships in Europe’s ever-evolving labour market, in response to demographic shifts and the twin green and digital transitions.
ESCO participated in a National Europass Centres (NEC) webinar organised by Europass, which focused on collaboration and synergies between Europass and related initiatives, including EURAXESS and ESCO. During the session, the ESCO team delivered a presentation on the current status of ESCO and demonstrated how ESCO is practically used within Europass, contributing to the discussion on strengthening interoperability and cooperation between EU tools and services.
Jointly organised by the Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee, this conference will discuss key findings from the 2025 Employment and Social Developments in Europe and Labour Market and Wage Developments in Europe.
On 12 November 2025, the ESCO Member State Working Group convened in Brussels. This was a first meeting after updating Terms or Reference and structure of the MSWG group. The meeting introduced key ESCO updates and novelties, how ESCO is being implemented in EURES, and set the scene for the journey towards the new ESCO major version. Discussions also covered the updated ESCO strategy, including options for modelling granularity. Participants also received an update on the ongoing revamp of the ESCO skills pillar and were introduced to the Europass “Smart CV”, highlighting new opportunities for smarter, skills-based matching across Europe.
This month-long initiative promotes access to career guidance for all ages. Partners across Europe will showcase policies and tools that support lifelong learning and career development.
On 23 October 2025, ESCO delivered a webinar for the EURES Network in the Puglia region in Italy, focusing on the use of ESCO for job matching and job search. The session provided an engaging overview of how ESCO supports jobseekers and employment services in improving vacancy–candidate matching and enhancing job search processes. It was a fruitful event with active discussion and participation.
Experts and stakeholders will gather to discuss the topics such as minimum income, breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty, and financing anti-poverty measures.
On 16 October 2025, an event dedicated to ESCO and its use in Slovenia was organised by the Slovenian Public Employment Service, bringing together stakeholders from both the public and private sectors. The ESCO team contributed with a presentation providing a general overview of ESCO and its future development. The programme also included a use case from Greek Public Employment Service, while other participating organisations presented how ESCO is used in education, job matching and labour market analysis.
Benchlearning assessment site visit Slovenia
On 16–17 September 2025, the Thematic Review Workshop on skills-based approaches in Public Employment Services (PES) processes and activities took place in Luxembourg City, organised by the European Network of Public Employment Services. At the event, ESCO participated actively, contributing to discussions on the use of a shared skills taxonomy to support jobseeker profiling and matching. ESCO engaged with PES representatives to share insights on updating and applying skills classifications to better address evolving labour market needs.
Benchlearning assessment site visit France
Benchlearning assessment site visit Finland
On 14 March 2025, the ESCO Member States Working Group met in Brussels to review recent updates and upcoming developments. Key topics included the upcoming ESCO minor version 1.2.1 and its consultation process, ongoing work on skills clustering and how ESCO is being used in the EURES platform and the European Commission’s internal HR systems. Members were updated on the synergies between Europass and EURES, and a national use case from Portugal was presented, demonstrating how ESCO is being applied in practice.
Benchlearning assessment site visit Belgium (VDAB)
On 2 July, 2025, ESCO held an engaging workshop focused on the "Revised Structure of the ESCO Skills Pillar," convening participants online via Webex. The workshop provided an overview of the skills clustering process and methodology, during which valuable feedback, including notable insights from participants, was given. Contributions were made by representatives from PES Denmark, PES Sweden, the University of Olomouc, and DG HR, leading to a productive discussion and Q&A session. Next steps of the consultation will follow in future communication.
On 01 July 2025, ESCO took part in the event “Advancing Digital Skills: Empowering Citizens, Enhancing Territories”, organised by Agenda Digitale Veneto and Veneto Innovazione Desk. During the event, ESCO gave a presentation on its use and benefits, with a focus on the work done to label digital skills in the ESCO classification.
The Member States Working Group on ESCO focus meeting held on 30 June, 2025, brought together participants online to discuss themes of representative multilingual content and updating skills-occupations relations. The meeting began with a welcome and introduction from the Commission, followed by discussions on leveraging existing data sources to enhance classification and improving the relationship between occupations and skills for a continuous pipeline. Key conclusions were drawn, highlighting collective commitment to advancing these important topics.
On 30 June 2025 the ESCO MSWG focus meeting was held online! ESCO presented approaches to enriching the classification using existing data sources and improving links between occupations and skills. Building on the outcomes of the previous MSWG plenary, the meeting explored practical ways to improve multilingual consistency and improve ESCO’s usability for a wide range of use cases — from job matching and policy analysis to training design.
PES Network Board Meeting
