RECEBA took part in the Forum on Vocational Excellence 2026, held in Graz from 7 to 9 September and organised by the Community of Practice of Centres of Vocational Excellence. The host was FH JOANNEUM, the university of applied sciences that coordinated GREENOVET, one of the first CoVE projects, and the theme was dual education and training for competitive regions. Around the plenary sessions, which included a keynote from the European Commission on the forthcoming European Strategy for Vocational Education and Training, CoVE projects ran workshops on sectoral and transversal questions, from applied research models to what happens to results once the funding ends.
That last question was where RECEBA found the most common ground. Many speakers and participants described the same condition for a CoVE to last: a regional or local government that keeps the dialogue between training providers, companies and public bodies going after the project, facilitates it and continues to support it. Several added that this only works if VET and skills are written into the region’s smart specialisation and circular economy strategies, so that training keeps pace with changing industry needs.
The exchange with Vamia, the vocational college of the City of Vaasa, gave this a concrete shape. Vamia was one of the Finnish partners in GREENOVET, which set up a Centre of Vocational Excellence in green innovation in the Vaasa region between 2020 and 2024. The centre continues today as Green Skills Vaasa, coordinated by the regional development company VASEK and anchored in the Ostrobothnia innovation and growth strategy. It runs a skills needs assessment every three years, an annual Green Skills Week with companies and a registry of green training programmes in the region. This is close to what the RECEBA Regional VET Excellence Panels are meant to become.
RECEBA brought the same argument to the workshop on skills recognition organised by Cleantech Bulgaria on the results of BuildSkills Academy: a solid regional ecosystem and the early involvement of public authorities and companies are what carry results beyond the project.
Two conversations will continue after Graz. With the European Training Foundation, through its GRETA initiative on greening vocational excellence in partner countries, RECEBA discussed direct exchanges on smart specialisation and training between its regions and regional actors in the Western Balkans and the southern Mediterranean. GREENOVET itself included a centre in Skopje, so this kind of cooperation is already practised. With MiCRET, an Erasmus+ policy experimentation project developing micro-credentials for renewable energy technicians, testing their recognition across borders and tracking country by country how ready each system is to adopt them, RECEBA compared notes on a field that will shape its own training offer.