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Eighty partners across Europe, three pilot projects already up and running in France, Germany and the Czech Republic and many more initiatives underway are only some of the accomplishments achieved in the first year of functioning of the Automotive Skills Alliance (ASA).  

The automotive ecosystem pioneered the Pact for Skills by delivering and implementing a sectoral upskilling and reskilling framework for the European automotive workforce.   

The Pact for Skills was launched by the European Commission on 10 November 2020 as one of the flagship initiatives under the European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness, and resilience. The main objective of the Pact is to mobilise resources and incentivise all relevant stakeholders to take real action to upskill and reskill the workforce, with a focus on pooling efforts and setting up partnerships. The Automotive Skills Alliance was created in parallel by the most representative associations of the automotive ecosystem, including CLEPA, to support the current challenges that the automotive industry is facing in terms of skills shortages due to the twin green and digital transition. 

The Alliance combines a dual approach that is both thematic and geographical, to offer everyone the opportunity to participate in the transformation of the sector. This builds on the synergies that the Alliance creates through the participation of all the key stakeholders, including large automotive companies, SMEs, national and local authorities, social partners, and training providers. The exchange of information and best practices is key to ensure progress and innovation both in terms of skills development, but also in the building of relevant projects and funding exploitation. 

The partnership analyses and documents the skill needs by key themes through the expertise of the members, who work and collaborate together in five subgroups dedicated to specific transition needs: Repair and Maintenance, Batteries, Hydrogen, IT, and Electronic Packaging.   

At a regional level, the Alliance works with all regions with consolidated industry know-how.  Among these, the first pilot projects have already been successfully launched in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), Stuttgart (Germany) and Moravian-Silesian (Czech Republic). This was also possible thanks to the financial mechanisms available at a regional level. 

The Alliance is paving the way to ensure coordinated action in other key automotive regions, engaging with relevant stakeholders to boost cooperation and ensure a Europe-wide implementation.  

The goal of the Automotive Skills Alliance is to upskill 5% of the automotive workforce each year for seven years, which would result in around 700,000 people being upskilled throughout the entire ecosystem, representing a potential overall private and public investment of €7 billion. Once again, the automotive ecosystem proves to be at the forefront of innovation, shaping a balanced and responsible transition towards climate neutrality while boosting the European automotive industry’s competitiveness.