Fostering transnational skills partnerships in Germany

Transnational partnerships for vocational education and training, as advocated in the United Nations’ Global Compact for Migration, have the potential to help close the skills gap in Germany. Past projects designed to coordinate labor migration with training programs have yielded mixed outcomes. Though they can entail clear development and migration policy benefits – particularly from the German perspective – several obstacles nonetheless remain. If Germany is to promote such partnerships and open up new legal channels to training and migration for medium-skilled workers, the country will need to improve the coherence of interministerial and administrative cooperation, establish sustainable financing models that involve the private sector, and partner with countries that are a good long-run match.