How Companies and NGOs Can Join EU Talent Partnerships in 2025

The EU’s Talent Partnerships now span Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Western Balkans and offer a structured way for organizations to collaborate on legal labor mobility, skill development, and employment. If you represent a company or non-profit, here’s how to plug into these initiatives and access funding, training, and long-term impact.

What Talent Partnerships Aim to Do

Talent Partnerships create a framework in which EU countries and partner nations identify skills in demand, provide training and validation, and connect vetted candidates to EU employers. Recognized participants earn a “Talent Partnership pass” visible in the EU Talent Pool, signaling verified training and skills.

They operate on a Team Europe approach, bringing together governments, vocational institutes, employers, and NGOs. The European Commission launched the partnership program in 2021, and since then, six formal partnerships exist.

How Your Organization Can Engage

1. Identify Relevant Pilots in Partner Countries

Check whether your sector is part of an existing partnership. For instance, the EU–Pakistan Talent Partnership launched a €3 million project in late 2024 focused on training and mobility across vocational and language skills.

The MOBILISE project between Netherlands, Tunisia, Egypt, and Ethiopia (funded by the Migration Partnership Facility) pilots circular migration in climate-smart agriculture. Internship rounds in 2024 hosted 37 trainees. This pathway is scaling into follow-up cohorts.

2. Use the Migration Partnership Facility (MPF)

MPF provides support tools for labor mobility aligned with Talent Partnerships. It helps design frameworks with partner country governments and NGOs and supports the EU Labour Mobility Practitioners’ Network.

Through the MPF you can access dashboards, matchmaking support, data on migration flows, and best practices.

3. Tap into Erasmus+ Blueprint Alliances or Pact for Skills

Although Erasmus+ focuses on education and youth mobility, its Alliances for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills support training content and curriculum development relevant to Talent Partnerships.

Other Regional Skills Partnerships, such as agri-food in Italy or the Lisbon area, bring together vocational providers, employers, and local authorities. They form building blocks for joint agricultural or tech migration schemes.

4. Get involved in pilot calls and integration contracts

By registering with national contact points, like ILO in Bangladesh or ICMPD for MOBILISE, you can participate in calls to deliver pre-departure training, language classes, or evaluation programs.

These pilots often include reintegration and skills return planning for circular migrants too.

“Talent Partnerships are living cooperation engines. Companies that step in early get visibility in the EU Talent Pool and build trust with origin-country ecosystems,” explains Jon Purizhansky, CEO of Joblio. “If you deliver pre-departure training or skills validation in partner countries, the workers arriving in Europe are prepared. That reduces dropout, speeds onboarding, and builds credibility.”

“Circular migration through programs like MOBILISE shows that talent exchange can be sustainable. Workers bring back knowledge; employers in Europe get reliable recruits. Both sides benefit long‑term,” adds Jon Purizhansky.

Steps to Connect.

1. Register interest with your country’s national contact point for Talent Partnerships often through migration or labor authorities, or EU focal bodies such as ILO or ICMPD.

2. Attend sector roundtables. These define roles in partner countries and opportunities for training or placements.

3. Propose projects such as training modules or mobility placements aligned to labor needs.

4. Secure co‑funding. EU financing typically supports up to 80% of project costs under MPF or AMIF.

5. Build twin arrangements. E.g. train in-country and host placement in EU. Examine circular return pathways.

EU proposals call for expanding Talent Partnerships to include east African, South Asian, and Latin American countries by 2026, with increased emphasis on agriculture, healthcare, and climate-related sectors. The planned EU Talent Pool will mark successful candidates with a pass flag, simplifying employer searches.

Meanwhile, reforms in ESF+ and AMIF now support mobility-linked skills modules via regional or cross-border partnerships. Projects under Pact for Skills are integrating foreign mobility into vocational ecosystems.

Joining an EU Talent Partnership is an opportunity to co-shape the future of legal migration and skills exchange. Whether you are a company seeking a sustainable recruitment pipeline or an NGO focused on training and inclusion, these frameworks provide funding, structure, and access to a brand-new set of vetted, internationally trained candidates.

As Jon Purizhansky notes, “Connection is the first step. Impact comes when we build training, validation, mobility, and reintegration into a full-cycle design.”

Originally Posted: https://jonpurizhansky.medium.com/how-companies-and-ngos-can-join-eu-talent-partnerships-in-2025-86c4b9eeef87