“Better education and training for young workers: the key to Europe's future” was the title of the seminar organised by CEAT (Spanish centre for workers’ questions) on 31 January and 1 February 2025. “Teachers are the key to an education system. Training them and ensuring their continuous professional development has an impact on the quality of the systems and guarantees a more efficient adaptation of the workforce to the labour market, it is important to stress that a successful education system cannot be improvised‘, explained Manuel Vila, Secretary General of Education, Science, Higher Education and Vocational Training of the Xunta de Galicia, in his introduction to the 47 representatives of workers’ organisations from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Romania. In his opening speech, David Cervera, President of CEAT, stated that the students who are currently in the early years of childhood and primary education will be the people who will build society in the 22nd century, which places us under an obligation to be vigilant and constantly improve the quality of education.
The seminar took place in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), was organised in cooperation with EZA and funded by the European Union.
Pilar Taboada de Zúñiga, Director of International Courses at the University of Santiago, gave a keynote speech that focused on language learning as a means of communication between peoples and cultures, highlighting the importance of the St. James Way (Camino de Santiago) as the first European cultural route, which is currently attracting increasing numbers of visitors from all over the world and has been a centre of internationalisation for more than 1000 years. According to Taboada de Zúñiga, a multicultural and multilingual society creates inclusive values and coexistence, enables the transfer of knowledge, ideas and values and the development of interculturality.
The Director General of Vocational Training of the Xunta de Galicia (the collective decision-making body of the government of the autonomous community of Galicia), Ms Eugenia Pérez, presented the vocational training model in Galicia and emphasised the importance of creating personalised training programmes and promoting academic-professional advice to help our young people and families seek employment opportunities in the different production sectors. He presented data that suggests that vocational training could be described as the silent revolution, as it is highly regarded today as it is a contemporary training programme and has all the means at its disposal to innovate. He stressed the value of the vocational training model, as the trainees find work and companies are confident of the qualifications of this workforce. A project is currently being developed in the area of innovation and internationalisation to promote language learning through artificial intelligence, which enables students to recreate real-life situations in English in the classroom through an interface that allows them to interact with avatars in different scenarios, depending on the professional sector they are studying.
Juan Manuel Vieites, President of the Galician Business Association, reminded participants of the fact that 95% of companies in Europe are small businesses that employ 100 million workers, all of which are facing the problem of low digital specialisation and a lack of qualified staff to a greater or lesser extent, which is hampering their growth potential. There is also a lack of qualified managers to drive the internationalisation of companies forwards. He emphasised the need for training programmes that focus on critical areas such as digitalisation, project management, leadership, biotechnology and facilitating the creation of strategic alliances.
José Luis Fernández, Director of the research office of the Spanish trade union USO and President of CEAMA, the Spanish Association of Senior Citizens' Organisations, highlighted the need to identify new sources of employment, job transformation and training challenges to ensure a competitive, secure and sustainable labour market in Europe. These sources of employment included home care services for the elderly, transport and logistics, technology and innovation and renewable energies. Mr Fernandez spoke in favour of a reduction in working hours, provided that this incurred no loss of productivity and the well-being and pay of employees would remain unaffected.
Silviu Traian Ispas, President of the Romanian Institute for Economic and Social Education (IFES), expressed his concern about the high rate of school drop-out in his country, which is not providing companies that need to invest in employee training with a qualified workforce because the education system is failing to prepare them for the labour market.
Alberto López Gómez, an independent financial advisor, highlighted the need to include education in finances as this skill would then enable citizens to make informed decisions about their savings and investments as they develop their life plan.
Antonio Manuel Carita, President of the Portuguese energy union (SINERGIA), explained that the unemployment rate in Portugal currently stands at 20%, which is compounded by the problem of new jobs relating to the transformation and the digital revolution. In particular, he stated that the public system in Portugal had been digitalised and that many of the administrative measures with citizens were hampered by the low level of digital expertise of the population.
Carmen Quintanilla, President of the National Confederation of Associations and Federations of Families and Women in Rural Areas (AFAMMER), pointed out that the ecological transition is a unique opportunity to revitalise rural areas.
The Director of International Academic Development of the Faculty of Education and Humanities (UNIR), Noemí García, emphasised the importance of collaboration between universities to bring higher education to different parts of the world, including Europe. Education can be used to achieve certain sustainable development goals very effectively, as they enable the population to be upwardly mobile and break the cycle of poverty. García emphasised that education contributes to the development of society in many ways, both at a micro and macro level. Non-university education is compulsory and universal in Europe, which is not the case in many other countries. García also addressed a question to the audience: “Why not provide universal access to higher education? The academic world tends to go into a laboratory to analyse and research, but it cannot ignore what’s happening outside of academia.” In this respect, she highlighted a social action project at her university for the Emberá-Chamí ethnic group (Colombia), who live in the jungle, have no electronic devices, but travel 15 hours by various means of transport reach a place where they can access computers, and whose language is not even Spanish, but who travel there every weekend for a year and graduate.
Javier Morillas, Advisor to the Court of Audit of the Kingdom of Spain and Professor of Applied Economics at the CEU University of San Pablo and the President of CEAT closed the seminar along with the contributions from the speakers. Morillas emphasised the need to distinguish between the informal economy and the illegal economy - two concepts that are often blurred, but which must be tackled in different ways to ensure decent jobs and that immigration policies ensure skilled labour for jobs that will reduce this problem.