Skills Mobility Partnerships in the Prague Process Region

Skills mobility partnerships (SMPs) are emerging as an increasingly important policy tool for addressing labour shortages, skills mismatches, and demographic pressures, while expanding legal migration opportunities and promoting skills development. SMPs combine mobility and training components through bilateral or multilateral cooperation between the origin and destination, with the aim of generating mutual benefits for governments, employers, and migrants.

This study examines governmental SMPs involving selected non-EU Prague Process participating states, focusing on the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) and Eastern European and Central Asian countries (Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). Based on desk research and comparative analysis of 39 identified SMPs, this paper provides an overview of partnership design and highlights takeaways for states in the region wishing to launch or refine SMPs, whether as an origin or destination.

This mapping illustrates that the states under study currently act primarily as an origin of skills mobility within SMPs, although several countries, particularly in the Western Balkans, are increasingly also becoming destinations. Most partnerships involve EU Member States, especially Germany, and are commonly structured either as formal agreements or as project-based initiatives. SMPs in the region frequently target specific labour shortages in the destination, particularly in sectors such as construction, healthcare, tourism, and ICT.

The analysis demonstrates that SMPs are highly flexible in design: They vary in terms of mobility duration, targeted skill levels, skilling approaches, and institutional arrangements. Most partnerships target medium- and high-skilled individuals and combine mobility with skills development measures such as apprenticeships, other on-the-job training, language learning, or professional development courses. While many SMPs foresee participants’ return to the origin, reintegration support remains limited. Similarly, although qualification recognition is a key challenge for labour migrants, only a few partnerships actively incorporate mechanisms to support recognition or alignment of qualifications. The findings also highlight several emerging trends. Dual ‘home and away’ track models, where only part of the trained cohort migrates while others remain in the origin labour market, are becoming increasingly common, particularly in project-based initiatives.

Overall, the study suggests that SMPs can offer Prague Process states a flexible framework for developing mutually beneficial labour mobility arrangements. They can support skills development, facilitate better-managed migration pathways, strengthen cooperation between countries, and help address labour shortages while mitigating risks associated with brain drain. At the same time, the analysis highlights the importance of ensuring that future partnerships systematically address issues such as qualification recognition, reintegration support, and long-term sustainability not yet consistently visible in existing partnerships.