[FR] Mobility of apprentices in the EU: reality and prospects

Every autumn since 2016, the European Commission has been organising ‘European Vocational Skills Week’, which aims to highlight excellence in vocational education and training (VET). This year, it is taking place from 14 to 18 October and, in addition to the official event in Helsinki, hundreds of initiatives are being organised across Europe by VET stakeholders. This illustrates the mobilisation of the European Commission over recent years to support the development of VET systems at national level and to improve the image of apprenticeship in Europe. This approach has been taken against a backdrop of soaring youth unemployment following the economic and budgetary crisis in the eurozone, and in the face of evidence that the best results, in terms of youth employment, are achieved in countries with well-established apprenticeship systems.
One of the EU’s levers for action has been the mobility of young apprentices: by promoting mobility, it is not just the young people who benefit from it; the aim is to promote apprenticeship as a path par excellence and to remedy the negative image it suffers in many countries. Two years ago, the EU launched a new long-term mobility programme for apprentices – Erasmus Pro. Two years on, and with the forthcoming transition from the Juncker Commission to the one chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, it is useful to take stock of the progress made and the challenges ahead.
This decoding aims to provide an overview of the reality of apprentice mobility in the EU (part 1) and the EU action taken to strengthen it (part 2). We also highlight the remaining obstacles to the development of this mobility (part 3) and put forward proposals for remedying them (part 4).