The European Commission has launched a public consultation on its new Skills Portability initiative. This is one of the activities planned by the Commission as part of the initiative’s impact assessment, along with semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and expert workshops with key stakeholders.

The Skills Portability Initiative (SPI), part of the broader Union of Skills, aims at ensuring that qualifications and skills are portable across national borders, while also making the EU a more attractive destination for global talent. This comprehensive initiative – structured along three action lines – is included in the Commission Work Programme for 2026 as part of the EU Fair Labour Mobility Package.

The recently launched consultation underpins the implementation of Action 1, on a potential legislative proposal to facilitate workers’ mobility through improved transparency of skills and qualifications, and digitalisation. Improving skills transparency and digitalisation is expected to help addressing the unnecessary barriers that workers face due to the wide variety of document formats, languages, and assessment methods which still hinders comparability of qualifications between countries.

The consultation, consisting of a questionnaire and a call for evidence, aims to strengthen the evidence-based nature of the initiative, by collecting stakeholder views on barriers to portability of qualifications and skills, as well as possible policy solutions. To this end, it will explore, inter alia, the use of interoperable digital credentials and existing EU tools (such as Europass) to allow skills and qualifications to be shared digitally and through increasingly standardised procedures.

The consultation will close on 27 February 2026.

Another EU public consultation feeding into the Union of Skills agenda collects feedback on the European strategy for vocational education and training. This initiative delivers on the Commission’s 2024-2029 political guidelines announcing a European strategy for vocational education and training (VET) to boost the number of people with a secondary VET degree and ‘give vocational education and training the prominence it deserves’, as also reflected in the mission letter of Executive Vice-President Mînzatu. It aims to accelerate the necessary reforms and support member states to make VET more attractive, innovative, inclusive and future-ready as a key driver for the EU’s competitiveness. The deadline to respond to the consultation is 19 February 2026.

Finally, the European Commission seeks inputs on an action plan for women in research, innovation and startups, aiming to address persistent gender gaps and promote diversity, equality and inclusiveness in the European Research Area (ERA) (deadline: 23 February 2026).