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The European Defence Skills Partnership

The EDSP brings together industry, academia, authorities and innovation, research and vocational organisations to foster cooperation in building skills for the European defence industry.

The EDSP was launched in 2018 with COSME funding to help its members sharing knowledge and best practices on skills, and working together in the development and implementation of scalable and sustainable solutions for closing the skills gaps.

Members from 20 EU countries engaged in developing the sectoral skills intelligence needed for informed decision-making across Europe, and the European defence skills strategy. To contribute to the implementation of the strategy, they partnered in the Assets+ project awarded EU €4 million Erasmus+ grant for the period 2020-2023 to develop training and related activities for upskilling and reskilling in the area of new and emerging technologies for the needs of the defence sector.

2020 EDSP activities implementing the strategy include a pilot on a European defence VET platform, mapping EU funding relevant for defence skills, and mapping relevant best practices.

Watch the video on the 1st year of the EDSP

Why EDSP?

The European Defence Fund, launched on 7 June 2017, presents a holistic approach for helping meet Europe's future security needs by introducing means to support the complete capability development cycle, from research through development to acquisition.

The technology up-take resulting from the defence research requires that the necessary technological skills will be available to the industry in sufficient numbers for proceeding with the development of capabilities. Security of supply and strategic autonomy implies that Europe needs to ensure the critical skills in a variety of technologically very advanced areas that will allow effective and efficient production and ultimately acquisition of capabilities.

To ensure success, the European Commission developed a comprehensive approach on skills involving all supply chain players, not only prime contractors but also SMEs and mid-cap companies. A number of instruments are considered to address skills at all the levels: regional, national and EU. It does this through the Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills initiative, launched with the New Skills Agenda for Europe in 2016 and supported by the European Defence Action Plan.

Watch the video of the conference “Towards a European Defence Skills Strategy”