What makes Regional Skills Partnerships work? EU-ALMPO insights from the ST4TE Territorial Impact Assessment workshop
By Athina Lazou, Special Advisor / EU Projects Expert, ACRONYM Ltd. | Scientific Coordinator of the EU-ALMPO project
On 2–3 June 2026, EU-ALMPO participated in the ST4TE workshop Regional Skills Partnerships under the Twin Transition, organised as a Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) exercise exploring the potential territorial implications of Regional Skills Partnerships (RSPs) across European regions.
The workshop brought together experts from different policy and research backgrounds to assess how regional characteristics may influence the implementation and effectiveness of RSPs, with particular attention to skills development, labour market transitions, innovation capacity, governance structures, and territorial disparities.
The first day focused on identifying and assessing territorial indicators relevant to the implementation of RSPs. Participants evaluated the expected direction and intensity of policy impacts across different regional contexts. These assessments were subsequently translated into territorial sensitivity maps, illustrating how the current RSP model may interact with different territorial characteristics across Europe.
The second day focused on policy reflection and discussion of the territorial patterns emerging from the TIA exercise.
EU-ALMPO Perspective
EU-ALMPO contributed to the discussions by bringing insights from its Communities of Practice and analytical framework on Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs), labour market governance, and AI-supported policy implementation.
A key message emerging from EU-ALMPO is that policy effectiveness depends not only on territorial needs or structural characteristics, but also on the ability of local and regional systems to activate critical implementation mechanisms.
The project’s findings suggest that successful implementation often depends on the interaction of several enabling conditions, including:
- governance coherence and coordination capacity;
- labour market intelligence and evidence use;
- stakeholder engagement and partnership ecosystems;
- institutional learning and adaptive capacity;
- interoperability and operational use of data.
This perspective provided an additional interpretative layer for the TIA exercise.
Interpreting Territorial Sensitivity Trough an EU-ALMPO Lens
The workshop maps highlighted significant territorial variation across indicators related to innovation, human capital, labour market transition potential, productivity, and implementation capacity.
From an EU-ALMPO perspective, these territorial patterns should not be interpreted simply as identifying «winning» and «losing» regions. Instead, they can be understood as reflecting differences in the capacity of regional ecosystems to activate the mechanisms upon which RSPs depend.
The discussions suggested that regions displaying high sensitivity often combine:
- strong institutional coordination;
- developed partnership ecosystems;
- effective use of labour market intelligence;
- higher implementation capacity.
At the same time, some regions facing substantial transition pressures may not necessarily possess the governance, coordination, or intelligence capacities required to activate these mechanisms effectively.
This distinction proved particularly relevant during discussions concerning territorial convergence and differentiated policy outcomes.
Reflections on Territorial Responsiveness
The workshop discussions highlighted the importance of balancing a common European framework for skills partnerships with sensitivity to territorial differences.
EU-ALMPO findings suggest that territorial responsiveness may be strengthened not necessarily by creating different policy models for different regions, but by strengthening the enabling conditions that support implementation. Such as:
- support for regional coordination and partnership-building;
- strengthening labour market intelligence and forecasting capacities;
- improving interoperability and evidence use;
- enhancing institutional learning and adaptive governance;
- providing targeted capacity-building support in regions with weaker implementation ecosystems.
We suggested that future policy should therefore complement RSPs with territorial capacity-building measures. These could include partnership facilitators, regional skills intelligence hubs, twinning arrangements, transition funds, technical assistance, and governance support mechanisms. The objective should not be to create different RSP models for different territories, but to ensure that all territories possess the minimum capacities needed to participate effectively in a common European framework
Practical Examples:
- Before launching an RSP, some regions may need a preparatory phase, similar to the European Commission funds «capacity-building before implementation» in Cohesion Policy.
- Create dedicated: Regional Skills Brokers or Territorial Skills Facilitators to mobilise partners, identify skills needs, prepare projects, coordinate implementation.
- Establish local or regional hubs that provide labour market intelligence, skills forecasting, skills gap analysis, transition monitoring.
- Twinning Programmes between Strong and Weak Regions.
- Territorial Skills Transition Funds. For coal transition regions, industrial restructuring regions, remote regions, demographic decline regions
- Create Skills Governance Technical Assistance Teams.
- Create Territorial Innovation Labs for Skills, to support experimentation before large-scale deployment.
- Produce Shared Digital Infrastructure. Develop common European or national platforms for: kills intelligence, vacancy analysis, monitoring, partnership management – EU_ALMPO observatory will perfectly fit.
- Community-Based Skills Outreach. Activities like local ambassadors, community mediators, employer outreach, guidance services will create trust and engagement that remain critical enabling mechanisms.
- Create a RSP Capacity Index. Before funding RSPs, assess regions on: Governance readiness, Skills intelligence, Partnership maturity, Institutional capacity, Transition exposure, Learning capacity. Regions with lower scores would automatically receive technical assistance, facilitation support, capacity-building funding.
Looking Forward
The ST4TE workshop provided a valuable opportunity to explore how territorial analysis can inform future skills and labour market policies under the twin transition.
For EU-ALMPO, the exercise reinforced the importance of understanding not only where policy interventions are needed, but also under which territorial conditions they are most likely to succeed.
The discussions confirmed the relevance of the EU-ALMPO analytical approach, which emphasizes the interaction between context, implementation mechanisms, and outcomes, and highlighted the need for future policy design to consider both territorial diversity and implementation capacity alongside broader economic and labour market objectives.