- A social tsunami looms: Energy-intensive industries employ 2.6 million workers across the EU27, and the Commission warns that about half of those jobs could vanish.
- National tools, European problem: The European Semester fragments a continent-wide industrial transformation into 27 uncoordinated national to-do lists.
- The skills myth: Workers are not just missing skills — they are avoiding precarious, underpaid jobs in construction, manufacturing and care.
- Power, not just protection: Restructuring still happens to workers, not with them, breeding backlash and political instability.
- From guidance to guarantees: A Quality Jobs Act would tie industrial investment to enforceable standards on bargaining, training and job quality.
The European Commission is right about one thing: beyond being an energy dependency crisis, Europe’s competitiveness crisis is also a labour market crisis.
Look at the numbers. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are under threat from high energy prices, first and foremost in foundation industries such as steel, non-ferrous metals, chemicals, ceramics and glass. But this energy-related crisis is also trickling down into downstream sectors as low production levels, US tariffs, Chinese overcapacity, electrification and supply chain shifts hit hard. Tens of thousands more jobs are hanging in the balance in batteries, solar and steel. This is not a marginal adjustment problem; it is a systemic industrial transformation, unfolding at speed, across sectors, across borders and across entire value chains.
While the European Commission is finally recognising the problem and is taking some steps in the right direction in the European Semester Spring Package presented on Wednesday, this is far from enough.
Industrial workers are already terrified by the ongoing restructuring crisis, fearing that their company might be hit next. The estimations in the Commission’s announcement are first and foremost horrifying for the men and women at risk of losing their jobs for reasons over which they have no control.
To give a sense of the scale of what the Commission’s leadership is announcing: energy-intensive industries currently employ 2.6 million workers in the EU27. In 2025 the EU lost approximately [EDITOR’S QUERY: the figure for last year’s manufacturing job losses is missing in the source] manufacturing jobs. If the Commission’s forecast is right, about half of the existing jobs in the EU’s energy-intensive industries could vanish — and what lies ahead represents [EDITOR’S QUERY: the multiplier comparing forecast losses to 2025 losses is missing in the source] times the job losses experienced in the industry last year.
This is not merely a wave of restructurings; it is a genuine social tsunami. Europe cannot afford such a social disaster. Massive restructurings must be avoided by every available means.
Decisive political action is needed to calm fears and prevent extremist political forces from exploiting the moment. A Quality Jobs Act must respond urgently, alongside an initiative on Just Transition that includes a SURE 2.0 to help safeguard jobs, the qualified workers behind them and their valuable skills.
A fragmented response to a shared crisis
The Semester assumes that labour market challenges are national. They are not.
The transformation underway is European — indeed, global. Automotive supply chains stretch from Central Europe to its Southern regions; battery ecosystems link mining, refining and manufacturing across multiple Member States; steel and chemicals face continent-wide energy price shocks. Yet our response is siloed into 27 separate national to-do lists.
This is how fragmentation takes hold: one country invests in skills for electric vehicles while another fails to support workers exiting combustion engine plants, despite both being part of the same supply chain. One region accelerates clean tech manufacturing while another loses its industrial base and its skilled workforce.
Competitiveness cannot be rebuilt on a patchwork of uncoordinated reforms. It requires European-level rules, guarantees and investment that match the scale of the challenge.
There is another blind spot in the Commission’s framing: the idea that labour shortages are simply a skills problem.
They are not. Workers are not just missing skills — they are avoiding bad jobs.
Across key sectors — construction, manufacturing, care — we see persistent vacancies alongside stagnant wages, insecure contracts and tough working conditions. You can train people all you want, but if the jobs on offer are precarious, underpaid or unsafe, they will not come.
Nominal wage growth is expected to remain strong as wages are forecast to adjust to inflation. But this is not a given. It requires stronger collective bargaining and genuine social dialogue with employers who actually sit at the table. We welcome the positive acknowledgement of the added value that both bring in addressing labour market challenges. Conditionality on public funding, however, is needed to ensure respect for social partnership and to improve its “effectiveness”, as called for in the Employment Guidelines.
If Europe wants a workforce that can compete with the United States and China, it must offer jobs people actually want to do — and on which they can build a life.
Addressing job quality is primary, but skills policies are also essential. The big challenge remains the implementation of the Semester’s Country-Specific Recommendations. This takes time, often drags and lacks accountability. Here again, social conditionalities could deliver better and faster results, automatically linking public money to skills through training obligations.
The most dangerous gap in the current approach is the absence of real worker power in managing change.
Right now, restructuring too often happens to workers, not with them. Decisions about plant closures, relocations or technological shifts are taken behind closed doors. Workers are informed late, consulted minimally and left to pick up the pieces.
That is a recipe for social backlash, political instability and failed transitions.
If we want the green and digital transitions to succeed, we need to make them negotiated transitions, in which workers have a real say in how industries evolve.
The case for a Quality Jobs Act
This is why Europe’s call for a Quality Jobs Act is not just justified — it is essential.
If the EU is serious about competitiveness, it needs to move beyond soft coordination and legislate for hard guarantees.
A Quality Jobs Act should include a right to anticipate change, ensuring that workers and their representatives are informed and involved early, with real leverage over transition strategies. It should establish strong collective bargaining frameworks, recognising that high coverage is not a relic of the past but the mechanism that secures fair wages, stability and smoother adaptation to change. It should guarantee just rights — access to training, income support and redeployment — rather than leaving them dependent on national budgets or political cycles. And it should set minimum job quality standards to end the race to the bottom on wages and conditions in key sectors.
This is about aligning industrial policy with social policy. Europe is already spending billions to support clean tech, strategic autonomy and industrial resilience. But without binding social conditions, those investments risk creating low-quality jobs — or destroying existing ones without a safety net.
A Quality Jobs Act ensures that every euro invested in competitiveness also builds a fair labour market.
There is also a deeper political point. Europe’s ability to navigate this transition depends on public trust. Workers must believe that the shift to electrification, decarbonisation and new technologies will not leave them behind. Without trust, there is no transition — only resistance.
The Commission is right to sound the alarm. But diagnosis is not enough.
We are not facing a cyclical slowdown that can be managed through coordination. We are in the middle of a structural transformation that demands binding rules, shared investment and empowered workers.
The European Semester points to the problem, but more is needed to solve it.
For that, Europe needs to act — decisively, collectively and with workers at the centre.
A Quality Jobs Act would be a start. Without it, we risk managing decline instead of shaping the future.
