How Can Labour Migration Policies Help Tackle Europe’s Looming Skills Crisis?
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Highlights
With three-quarters of EU employers struggling to find workers, coordinated labour migration reforms offer Europe a pragmatic way to narrow its growing skills gap.
- Three-quarters of EU employers report difficulty finding skilled workers, and aging populations will intensify shortages in construction, health care, and ICT—sectors where domestic labor alone cannot meet demand.
- EU labour migration policy remains highly fragmented, with nearly 300 national pathways, slow visa processing, and cumbersome qualification recognition deterring employers and prospective migrants.
- A proposed “skills and migration omnibus” could streamline procedures and rights across multiple directives at once, offering a more pragmatic route than directive-by-directive reforms.
- Recommendations include refocusing EU mobility schemes to gather data on access barriers, improving coherence between migration and skills policies, and adopting sector strategies for high-priority fields.
Europe is facing a looming skills crisis, with three-quarters of small and medium-sized enterprises across various sectors reporting difficulties finding workers with the right expertise and experience. And as European societies age and workforces shrink, these difficulties will only become more acute. This crisis threatens not only Europe’s economic growth but also its ability to make progress on other major policy priorities, including building sufficient and affordable housing, meeting green transition commitments, and keeping up with digital innovations.
Responding to these skills shortages will require a multipronged approach. Reforming and expanding training opportunities for workers across Europe and improving working conditions should be central elements. But labor migration will also need to be part of the response, given the shrinking of the European workforce and the time-sensitive nature of certain skills needs, which cannot be put on hold while training programs are designed and implemented.
In all of this, there is a compelling case for greater EU-wide coordination. This report explores the potential benefits of a more unified European approach to labor migration, challenges that have impeded past coordination efforts, and which actions should be top of the European Union’s to-do list.
Table of contents
1 Introduction
2 European Workforces at a Crossroads
3 The EU Track Record on Labour Migration
4 Making Better Use of EU Labour Migration Tools
A. Legislative action
B. Mobility schemes
C. Joining the dots between migration and other skills investments
5 Conclusion
About the Global Skills and Talent Initiative
Anchored in the premise that immigration policy must be part of a broader skills and talent strategy, the Initiative has a particular focus on employment-based immigration and the supports that can help immigrants apply their full range of educational and professional skills.
