VET4EU2 welcomes the European Commission’s intention to modernise and simplify the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and its associated programmes, including Erasmus+. These steps are necessary to ensure the EU’s financial instruments are fit to address the challenges of the future. We welcome the proposed increase to the Erasmus+ budget to €40.9 billion. This marks a step in the right direction, as the full potential of VET remains underutilised.

The Commission’s proposal signals a positive recognition of the crucial role skills, education, research, and innovation play in Europe’s future. The announced link between Erasmus+, the new Competitiveness Fund and the Union of Skills is particularly promising. This integration presents an opportunity to fully harness the value of VET as a driver of European competitiveness, resilience, and social development. The VET sector is uniquely connected to SMEs—Europe’s economic engine—through work-based learning, innovation partnerships, regional skills ecosystems, and lifelong learning opportunities.

We call on the Commission, European Parliament and Member States to ensure the future MFF provides long-term, structural investment in Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs). These CoVEs should be recognised as a backbone of the Union of Skills and embedded not only in Erasmus+, but also in other funding instruments such as Horizon Europe, the Competitiveness Fund, Digital Europe, and regional cohesion funds. Their role as regional, national and European hubs for innovation, skills development, and cross-sectoral cooperation in strategic domains—such as AI, the green transition, and social inclusion—must be reinforced.

We also call for the parity of esteem and balanced funding across education sectors in the next MFF. Europe needs a horizontal spectrum approach that strengthens cooperation between VET, general, and higher education. VET must be equally visible and equally supported—across EU initiatives, financial instruments, and public narratives.

As VET providers we are ready to contribute to skills development, innovation and international cooperation. We look forward to contributing to targeted investments—under the future MFF and the Union of Skills agenda—in applied research, hybrid teaching roles, global learning mobility, microcredentials, digital and green skills, the development and recognition of VET qualifications within and beyond the EU, and the expansion of Centres of Vocational Excellence. These are essential to building a truly inclusive, resilient, and future-proof European skills ecosystem.

The above can only be realised through strong cooperation. The members of VET4EU2 must be integrally involved to the process and its developments.