Europe's got talent

Europe’s got Talent: Local action groups on talent

Abstract:

Due to their more peripheral location and the resulting socio-economic built-up, border regions are particularly vulnerable for out-migration of qualified persons, the so-called brain-drain phenomenon. Together with the reality of an ageing workforce, the trend towards more skill-intensive jobs and the resulting mismatch on the labour market, border regions are likely to face a lack of qualified workforce.

Local and regional actors on the labour market (governmental, educational, employers et cetera) are not always aware of the impact of their individual actions on the local and regional labour market as a whole. This situation leads to a possibly suboptimal situation. Sometimes the policies and the effects of their individual actions towards ‘talent’ are implicit, and the joint effects of the separate actions taken by each partner are unknown.

Four European border regions, Achterhoek, Euregio Gronau, North Rhein Westphalia/ Dortmund and Navarre, worked together in the project Local Action Groups on Talent, one of eight projects in the mini-programme ‘Brain Flow’ within the framework of INTERREG IVC to share experiences and best practices in order to make these actions more visible and optimize them.

The LaGoTa project started in May 2012 with the first project phase “Make it Visible”. Each region described their economic landscape and developments on their regional labour market and best coping practices. In the second phase of the project “Make it better”, Local Action Groups were established and local action plans developed.

These plans were presented during the final conference in Doetinchem on the 10th of April 2013 and the ‘Brain Flow’ Thematic Exchange of Experience Meeting in Pamplona on the 30th of May 2013. During this Meeting an International Jury named the LaGoTa project as the Award winning project of the INTERREG IVC European Talent Competition.

This publication presents the main results of the LaGoTa project.

Editor drs. Paul B.W. Hartman
with contributions of:
- Paul Hartman & Bart Teunissen (Region Achterhoek, the Netherlands)
- Harriet Ellwein, Sandra Schulze & Robert Schwanitz (North Rhein Westphalia/City of Dortmund, Germany)
- Vanessa Magui, Yolanda Esteban & Jose Manuel Olivar (Navarre, Spain)
- Marieke Maes & Linda Blom (Euregio Gronau-Enschede, Germany & the Netherlands)