The European Commission is organising a major conference in Brussels to present the key findings of the 'New Skills for New Jobs' high-level expert group, providing recommendations on how to take forward the EU skills and jobs agenda. In addition, new figures on the supply and demand for skills in Europe up to 2020 will be presented.

The conference "New skills for new jobs" comes at a time when the Barroso II Commission will be starting to shape the EU 2020 Strategy, the follow-up to the Lisbon Strategy. According to the experts, much stronger bridges have to be built between the worlds of work and education and training.

This is all the more urgent as today, despite the crisis, several millions of jobs are waiting to be filled by the right candidates. Labour markets in the EU are changing fast: within the next decade, around 80 million vacancies will need to be filled due to retirement and 20 million new jobs can be expected to be created, often requiring more and better suited skills than ever before.

After some years of relatively high growth and job creation (8 million new jobs alone in 2006-2008), the economic crisis has hit labour markets in Europe and affected the prospects and livelihoods of Europeans. In response, the European Commission launched a recovery plan to tackle the effects of the crisis and set three priorities for safeguarding jobs. One of them is upgrading and maintaining the level of skills in Europe.