On 28 May 2026, MASTERY, Green Circle and BuildSkills Academy came together for a joint online webinar to share results, align methodologies and launch a new strategic cooperation framework, sealed by a Memorandum of Understanding.
Organised by ACR+, MASTERY's partner, the "Reskilling for the Green Transition: What Erasmus+ Projects Can Teach European Policy" event gathered VET providers, policymakers, industry representatives, chambers of commerce, researchers and European stakeholders around a single question: how can micro-credentials support Europe's green transition, workforce mobility and industrial competitiveness?
A strategic instrument, not an experiment
EU policies such as the European Education Area, the Union of Skills, the Pact for Skills and the Council Recommendation on Microcredentials have put skills portability and VET innovation at the heart of Europe's competitiveness agenda. Yet implementation remains fragmented, and traditional qualification systems often struggle to keep pace with fast-changing labour markets, especially for low- and semi-skilled workers in construction, manufacturing and circular economy sectors, whose jobs must progressively absorb green competencies to stay relevant.
Microcredentials offer a concrete answer: short, flexible, verifiable and portable learning pathways. The webinar showed how three complementary Erasmus+ projects are turning this idea into practice.
Three projects, one direction
MASTERY - Micro credentiAlS reliabiliTy unlEashing gReen economy Project n. 101132845 ERASMUS-EDU-2023-PI-FORWARD coordinated by SFC Sistemi Formativi Confindustria, is a Forward Looking Project under the Erasmus+ Program. It has identified 12 Enabling Green Skills across five industrial sectors, built microcredential pathways aligned with ESCO, defined quality assurance and portability guidelines, and tested them through 13 pilot sites across Europe using its "8-Visions" methodology. WAM World Alliance for Microcredentials is involved in the project as an external party, validating the process of designing, delivering and issuing MASTERY micro-credentials.
Green Circle led by TecMinho, the Forward Looking project that develops sector-specific green competency frameworks for construction and the built environment, aligned with ESCO for European portability.
BuildSkills Academy is the Centre of Vocational Excellence coordinated by Cleantech Bulgaria. It embeds innovation into vocational education through its BuildEnrichedSkills Methodology (BESM), helping construction training systems respond to the twin transition.
What practitioners are saying
The webinar also presented the results of the MASTERY network consultation on the European Commission's Skills Portability Initiative, based on a survey of practitioners across the EU. Three messages stood out:
- documenting work-based skills is the main portability gap (82% of respondents);
- existing EU frameworks, as EQF, Europass, ESCO, Microcredentials, need sector-specific implementation, not new layers;
- and digital tools are necessary but not sufficient without shared agreement on what credentials mean.
These findings, together with five targeted recommendations for EU action, will directly feed into MASTERY's forthcoming Policy Recommendations.
A Memorandum of Understanding for system change
The webinar's central milestone was the launch of a Memorandum of Understanding among the three consortia, open to further partners. It commits signatories to cooperate on dissemination and joint policy positioning, on co-designing new European innovation initiatives, from VET innovation to sustainable construction and green building, and on a set of zero-cost collaborative actions, including shared pilots, communities of practice and dialogue with CEDEFOP and ETF. Notably, partners joining the framework will gain free access to MASTERY training courses and its 12 Enabling Green Skills microcredentials.
As speakers underlined throughout the event, the real challenge for Europe is no longer whether microcredentials work, but how to scale them credibly. This MoU is a concrete step in that direction, from experimentation to system change.
What's next
The cooperation will continue through BuildSkills Academy masterclasses in Brussels (18–19 June), Berlin (17–18 September) and Bologna (8–9 October), and through MASTERY's multi-stakeholder national workshops in Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Finland, feeding into its Policy Recommendations on Microcredentials.
Organisations working on microcredentials, green skills, VET innovation, sustainable construction or workforce upskilling are welcome to join the network.
Contact: Ivana Russiello, European Projects Specialist,
On 28 May 2026, MASTERY, Green Circle and BuildSkills Academy came together for a joint online webinar to share results, align methodologies and launch a new strategic cooperation framework, sealed by a Memorandum of Understanding.
Organised by ACR+, MASTERY's partner, the "Reskilling for the Green Transition: What Erasmus+ Projects Can Teach European Policy" event gathered VET providers, policymakers, industry representatives, chambers of commerce, researchers and European stakeholders around a single question: how can micro-credentials support Europe's green transition, workforce mobility and industrial competitiveness?
A strategic instrument, not an experiment
EU policies such as the European Education Area, the Union of Skills, the Pact for Skills and the Council Recommendation on Microcredentials have put skills portability and VET innovation at the heart of Europe's competitiveness agenda. Yet implementation remains fragmented, and traditional qualification systems often struggle to keep pace with fast-changing labour markets, especially for low- and semi-skilled workers in construction, manufacturing and circular economy sectors, whose jobs must progressively absorb green competencies to stay relevant.
Microcredentials offer a concrete answer: short, flexible, verifiable and portable learning pathways. The webinar showed how three complementary Erasmus+ projects are turning this idea into practice.
Three projects, one direction
MASTERY - Micro credentiAlS reliabiliTy unlEashing gReen economy Project n. 101132845 ERASMUS-EDU-2023-PI-FORWARD coordinated by SFC Sistemi Formativi Confindustria, is a Forward Looking Project under the Erasmus+ Program. It has identified 12 Enabling Green Skills across five industrial sectors, built microcredential pathways aligned with ESCO, defined quality assurance and portability guidelines, and tested them through 13 pilot sites across Europe using its "8-Visions" methodology. WAM World Alliance for Microcredentials is involved in the project as an external party, validating the process of designing, delivering and issuing MASTERY micro-credentials.
Green Circle led by TecMinho, the Forward Looking project that develops sector-specific green competency frameworks for construction and the built environment, aligned with ESCO for European portability.
BuildSkills Academy is the Centre of Vocational Excellence coordinated by Cleantech Bulgaria. It embeds innovation into vocational education through its BuildEnrichedSkills Methodology (BESM), helping construction training systems respond to the twin transition.
What practitioners are saying
The webinar also presented the results of the MASTERY network consultation on the European Commission's Skills Portability Initiative, based on a survey of practitioners across the EU. Three messages stood out:
- documenting work-based skills is the main portability gap (82% of respondents);
- existing EU frameworks, as EQF, Europass, ESCO, Microcredentials, need sector-specific implementation, not new layers;
- and digital tools are necessary but not sufficient without shared agreement on what credentials mean.
These findings, together with five targeted recommendations for EU action, will directly feed into MASTERY's forthcoming Policy Recommendations.
A Memorandum of Understanding for system change
The webinar's central milestone was the launch of a Memorandum of Understanding among the three consortia, open to further partners. It commits signatories to cooperate on dissemination and joint policy positioning, on co-designing new European innovation initiatives, from VET innovation to sustainable construction and green building, and on a set of zero-cost collaborative actions, including shared pilots, communities of practice and dialogue with CEDEFOP and ETF. Notably, partners joining the framework will gain free access to MASTERY training courses and its 12 Enabling Green Skills microcredentials.
As speakers underlined throughout the event, the real challenge for Europe is no longer whether microcredentials work, but how to scale them credibly. This MoU is a concrete step in that direction, from experimentation to system change.
What's next
The cooperation will continue through BuildSkills Academy masterclasses in Brussels (18–19 June), Berlin (17–18 September) and Bologna (8–9 October), and through MASTERY's multi-stakeholder national workshops in Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Finland, feeding into its Policy Recommendations on Microcredentials.
Organisations working on microcredentials, green skills, VET innovation, sustainable construction or workforce upskilling are welcome to join the network.
Contact: Ivana Russiello, European Projects Specialist,