Skills and career development in the blue economy

Our coasts and seas have the potential to deliver sustainable growth and jobs in the coming years. A competitive, resilient and socially fair blue economy needs highly qualified and skilled professionals. Many blue economy sectors have difficulties to find the right people. The current situation, e.g. COVID-19, increases the challenges even more.

Acknowledged areas of concern are:

• skills gap between education offer and labour market needs is even more accentuated by the twin digital and climate transitions;
• lack of communication and cooperation between education and industry;
• lack of attractiveness and awareness of career opportunities in the blue economy;
• lack of ocean literacy culture at the basis of it all.

Actions put in place to tackle these concerns:

1. Blue careers in Europe call for proposals

The blue careers project aim to establish platforms for cooperation between business and education, at local/regional or transnational level. It aims to develop and implement concrete actions to close the skills gap, tackle the unemployment challenge and raise the attractiveness of "blue careers" among students.

With the last “Call for proposals on Blue Careers”, eight projects have been selected. The new 'blue career' projects will work towards enhancing career opportunities in the maritime economy, while the 'blue labs' projects will focus on young researchers helping them to bring research results to the market.

Building on lessons learned, a new call is foreseen for 2021.

2. Blueprint on sectorial skills cooperation for the maritime technology sector

The European maritime technology industry is a world leader in terms of innovation and key enabler. It provides the more advanced technologies and structures needed to ensure the development of all maritime activities, such as offshore renewable energy, shipbuilding or aquaculture. It also figures among the industrial ecosystems for recovery, identified recently in the new ‘European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience’ published on 1st July 2020.

Back in June 2016 the Commission launched the "new skills agenda for Europe" to make sure that people develop the skills necessary for the jobs of today and tomorrow, contributing to growth across the EU. The “blueprint for sectoral skills cooperation” was one of the 10 concrete measures to support the implementation of this skills agenda for Europe. The maritime technology sector has been selected as one of the identified sectors to pilot this initiative.

The sector has radically changed and diversified over the last decade, passing from classical steel-intensive ship types to building the most complex and advanced technologies and vessels. It is currently one of the most research-intensive sectors in Europe (9% of its GDP invested in RDI). The industry is continuously innovating and diversifying into new activities. It also provides the technologies and vessels to enable a sustainable and safe development of the blue economy, e.g. offshore wind, ocean energy, marine biotechnology, aquaculture, deep-sea exploration and surveillance. At the same time, it also updates traditional shipping techniques in response to sustainability and climate change criteria.

To consider the needs of the sector in the future, particularly in the shipbuilding and offshore renewable energy production value chains, the dedicated Blueprint project MATES is attempting to provide useful insights in terms of skills needs and gaps.

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