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GreenComp - Policy background and methodology

GreenComp responds to the ambitions set out in the European Green Deal. Following this political direction, the Commission has published policy papers entitled European Skills Agenda for Sustainable Competitiveness, Social Fairness and Resilience (2020) and the European Education Area by 2025 (2020) underscoring the need to develop a European competence framework on sustainability. In these policy papers, the Commission explicitly recommends activating education and training by developing skills, including upskilling and reskilling, and by investing in learning for environmental sustainability.

The EU biodiversity strategy for 2030: ‘Bringing Nature Back into our Lives’ (2020) also highlights the important role that education and training have in enabling the EU to reach its goal to become a climate-neutral continent by 2050.

Methodology

The European sustainability competence framework is the result of consensus building based on a mixed method research process. This process has led to the gradual and progressive refinement of GreenComp and, ultimately, the consolidated framework set out in this report. To achieve this, a diverse group of approximately 75 experts and stakeholders was consulted at different stages to obtain their feedback and progressively reach a consensus.

The group included experts on sustainability education and lifelong learning from academia and research institutions, youth representatives, educators, policy representatives from EU Member States and NGOs.

GreenComp builds on previous work carried out by the JRC to define other key competence for lifelong learning, namely digital, entrepreneurship, personal, social and learning to learn competences

Related Content

JRC report: GreenComp. The European sustainability competence framework.

DigComp: The Digital Competence Framework for citizens

EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework

LifeComp: The European framework for the personal, social and learning to learn key competence