Twin revolution

The European Commission Plan to work towards a climate neutral society, which will transform the EU into a resource-efficient and competitive economy, outlined those digital technologies are a critical enabler for attaining the sustainability goals. This is an ambitious and cross-cutting objective to all EU policies. Thus, the New Industrial Strategy and digital strategy Shaping Europe’s Digital Future reflect the necessity to deploy technologies and reshape European industries towards a new reality, ensuring that it can become the enabler of this change.

Nevertheless, accelerating the twin green and digital transitions will not only require new technologies, but also to reskill its workforce. In this way, the European Skills Agenda and the Council Recommendation on VET has already expressed the necessity of update current VET programmes to industry needs to reskill European workforce on digital and green skills.

While digital and green transformation has been a top priority for advanced companies of key priority sectors in recent years, SMEs of traditional industries have been slow on the uptake. Companies that embrace the disruptive potential of digital and sustainable approaches set themselves from apart their competitors.

Europe has strong traditional and manufacturing industries that were not born digital, neither adapted for a green economy. Therefore, the twin digital and green transition of these industries will require large investment on innovation, but firstly reskilling its workforce is essential for the success of this twin transition or revolution.

Among the manufacturing industries, the furniture and textile are examples of traditional and fragmented sectors, with more than 90% of SMEs, but with a high impact on the European industry. According to the DG of Internal Market data, the furniture and textile industries are labor-intensive sectors that employ a total of near 3 million workers and generate an annual turnover of around EUR 262 billion. Despite this, their index of innovation is lower than the rest of manufacturing industries, so a higher effort for their digital and green transition is required.