DAILY NEWS
Brussels, 04 December 2025
Commission sets out roadmap for future-proof quality jobs in a competitive EU
Today, the European Commission presented the Quality Jobs Roadmap, a strong commitment to improving job quality and creating high-quality and future-proof jobs in Europe. The Commission also launched a first-stage consultation on the forthcoming Quality Jobs Act, a new legislative proposal to ensure workers' rights while keeping up with technological, economic and societal changes.
Adequate wages and quality jobs are essential to boost productivity, strengthen Europe's competitiveness, and protect against in-work poverty. While job quality in the EU is generally high, workers continue to feel the impact of global crises and rising living costs. At the same time, companies face labour and skills shortages while striving to remain competitive in a fast-changing global environment.
The Roadmap focuses on the areas where EU action can make the greatest difference:
The Roadmap has been developed based on extensive consultations with European and national trade unions and employer organisations (‘social partners'), mobilising around 200 organisations across the EU and engaging in more than 50 discussions in all Member States.
Towards a Quality Jobs Act
As announced by President von der Leyen in her 2025 state of the EU address and the Commission's 2026 work programme, the Commission will propose a Quality Jobs Act in 2026. The new law will update EU rules protecting workers while supporting productivity and competitiveness.
Today's first-stage consultation seeks social partners' views on the direction of EU action to improve job quality. The consultation highlights several areas that a future law could cover, including:
This new consultation will complement the right to disconnect and telework consultation finalised in October 2025.
Next Steps
The first-stage consultation of social partners on the future Quality Jobs Act will run until 29 January 2026.
Background
President von der Leyen announced the Quality Jobs Roadmap in her 2024–2029 Political Guidelines to ensure competitiveness and prosperity in the EU.
The Quality Jobs Roadmap builds on several initiatives such as the Competitiveness Compass, the Union of Skills, the Clean Industrial Deal, all of which underline quality jobs as key to competitiveness, sustainable growth and a strong European social model. Its priorities are reflected in the proposed Multiannual Financial Framework, which allocates at least 14% of national and regional partnership funding to EU social objectives.
For More Information
Quality Jobs Roadmap: Communication
Questions & Answers
Factsheet
First-stage consultation on Quality Jobs Act
Webpage: Competitiveness
Quote(s)
Every job in Europe must be a quality job. That is how we attract talent, reduce in-work poverty, and strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and social cohesion. Today’s Roadmap paves the way for a Quality Jobs Act to safeguard workers’ rights and support them as workplaces modernise.
Roxana Mînzatu, Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness
Commission launches major package to fully integrate EU financial markets
Today, the European Commission adopted a comprehensive package of measures designed to remove barriers and unlock the full potential of the EU single market for financial services. This package is a central component of the Savings and Investments Union (SIU) strategy, aiming to create a more integrated, efficient, and competitive financial system providing EU citizens better options for growing their wealth and supporting businesses in accessing funding.
More integrated capital markets are essential for fortifying the EU's economic strength and achieving strategic priorities such as competitiveness, digital and green transitions, defence and security. Deeper integration of financial markets is not an end, but a means to create a single market for financial services greater than the sum of its national parts. Simplified access to capital markets reduces costs and makes the markets more appealing for investors and companies across all Member States, irrespective of size.
Despite recent progress, EU financial markets remain significantly fragmented, small and lack competitiveness, missing out on potential economies of scale and efficiency gains. In 2024 the market capitalisation of stock exchanges amounted to 73% of EU GDP, compared to 270% in the US. Financial institutions still face varying requirements and practices across Member States, hindering cross-border operations and restricting opportunities for both citizens and businesses, negatively impacting the economy and the EU's competitiveness.
Today's package simplifies the EU regulatory and supervisory framework significantly, and comes just nine months after its announcement in the SIU strategy, underscoring the political importance and urgency of this issue.
Proposed measures
Removing obstacles to market integration and leveraging scale
The package aims to eliminate barriers to integration in trading, post-trading, and asset management. It seeks to enable market participants to operate more seamlessly across Member States, thus reducing cost differences between domestic and cross-border transactions. Proposed measures include enhancing passporting opportunities for Regulated Markets (RMs) and Central Securities Depositories (CSDs), introducing 'Pan-European Market Operator' (PEMO) status for operators of trading venues to streamline corporate structures and licenses into a single entity or single license format, and streamlining the cross-border distribution of investment funds (UCITS and AIFs) in the Union.
Facilitating innovation
The package focuses on removing regulatory barriers to innovation related to distributed ledger technology (DLT). It adapts the regulatory framework to support these technologies and amends the DLT Pilot Regulation (DLTPR) to relax limits, increase proportionality and flexibility, and provide legal certainty, thus encouraging the adoption of new technologies in the financial sector.
Streamlining and enhancing supervision
Improvements to the supervisory framework are closely linked to the removal of regulatory barriers. The package aims to address inconsistencies and complexities from fragmented national supervisory approaches, making supervision more effective and conducive to cross-border activities, while being responsive to emerging risks. This includes transferring direct supervisory competences over significant market infrastructures such as certain trading venues, Central Counterparties (CCPs), CSDs, and all Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs) to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and enhancing ESMA's coordination role for the asset management sector.
Simplification and burden reduction
As seen in previous SIU measures, the package will simplify the capital markets framework further by converting directives into regulations, streamlining level 2 empowerments, and reducing national options and discretions to prevent gold-plating.
Strengthening the EU's economy and bolstering its international position are central to the European Commission's mandate. The Competitiveness Compass outlines how to achieve these goals, with the Savings and Investments Union (SIU) Strategy acting as a key enabler of this plan. To improve EU competitiveness, the European Council emphasises the importance of creating unified and robust European capital markets that everyone in the EU can access. In March 2025, the Council asked the Commission to work on capital market oversight and reducing fragmentation. In September 2025, the Parliament supported the Commission's plan for new legislation to improve trading and post-trading systems, remove cross-border barriers, and update the framework for new technologies.
Next steps
The proposals must now be negotiated and approved by the European Parliament and the Council. These components are interconnected and together form a cohesive set of reforms essential for establishing a genuine single market across the entire investment chain. Maintaining the unity of the package is crucial. The Commission is dedicated to collaborating closely with the European Parliament, Member States, and other stakeholders to ensure the swift and effective implementation of these measures.
For more information
Questions and answers
Communication
For too long, Europe has tolerated a level of fragmentation that holds back our economy. Today we are making a deliberate choice to change course. By building a real Single Financial Market, we will give people better opportunities to grow their wealth, and we unlock stronger financing for Europe’s priorities. Market integration is not a technical exercise — it is a political imperative for Europe’s prosperity and global relevance.
Maria Luís Albuquerque, Commissioner for Financial Services and the Savings and Investments Union
€5.2 billion of EU Emissions Trading revenues earmarked for clean transition technologies under the Innovation Fund
The European Commission has announced the opening of three new funding opportunities under the Innovation Fund with a total budget of €5.2 billion in EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) revenues. The 2025 Net-Zero Technologies call with a budget of €2.9 billion, the third auction for hydrogen production under the European Hydrogen Bank with €1.3 billion, and the first-ever auction for decarbonisation of industrial process heat under the Industrial Decarbonisation Bank with a €1 billion budget.
Together, these opportunities mark a major step forward in achieving the EU's climate and energy objectives by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050. They will also significantly contribute to progress on the clean transition and deliver the Clean Industrial Deal, boosting the competitiveness and resilience of European industry.
Driving Europe's clean industrial transformation
The general call for net-zero technologies (IF25 NZT call) seeks to bridge investment gaps, attract public and private capital, and strengthen Europe's leadership in clean-technology manufacturing and deployment.
With an allocated budget of €2.9 billion, it supports decarbonisation projects that demonstrate highly innovative technologies and processes that are sufficiently mature and have a significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It involves projects of different scale, as well as those focusing on the manufacturing of components for renewable energy, energy storage, heat pumps and hydrogen production, including electric-vehicle batteries.
Projects that can apply to the call will be assessed based on their potential to reduce GHG emissions, degree of innovation, project maturity, replicability and cost efficiency. Recognising that small-scale innovations can play an important role in Europe's decarbonisation efforts, there will be a new dedicated bonus point for projects coordinated and implemented only by SMEs.
Supporting industrial transformation through hydrogen
Clean hydrogen is an important alternative to replace fossil fuels, and it is increasingly used for the decarbonisation of heavy industry and transport sectors. With €1.3 billion, the third auction under the European Hydrogen Bank (IF25 Hydrogen Auction) is designed to provide cost-efficient support for the production of renewable fuels of non-biological origin (RFNBO) hydrogen or electrolytic low-carbon hydrogen across three topics, including a new topic for producers of hydrogen with maritime or aviation off takers.
Projects selected under the auction will receive support in the form of a fixed premium payment upon verified and certified production of hydrogen for a maximum period of 10 years.
Tackling emissions with decarbonising industrial process heat
The first European-wide auction for decarbonising industrial process heat (IF25 Heat Auction) is a milestone in establishing the future Industrial Decarbonisation Bank to address one of the EU's biggest sources of GHG emissions. Up to €1 billion will be used to support electrified and direct-renewable heat production, which is currently responsible for three-quarters of industrial emissions. Support will be auctioned to projects which can deliver the most cost-effective CO2 abatement, closing the cost gap between sustainable solutions and fossil fuel-based alternatives for industrial process heat.
Opened to different project sizes and across all industrial sectors, the auction will support the deployment of technologies such as heat pumps, electric boilers, resistance and induction heating, direct renewable heat solutions (solar thermal or geothermal) as well as hybrid projects that combine different technologies. Support is granted as an output-based fixed premium, linked to verified decarbonised heat production and paid for a maximum period of five years.
In addition, Member States have the possibility to leverage on the Innovation Fund's evaluation process and a streamlined state aid approval process. Via the 'Auctions-as-a-Service' scheme, they are able to dedicate national funds to support projects that have passed the evaluation award criteria but were not selected for Innovation Fund funding due to budgetary limitations. Germany and Spain have confirmed their participation in Auctions-as-a-Service in these auctions. Germany will dedicate a further €1.3 billion in national funds to support RFNBO hydrogen production projects nationally. Spain will also dedicate a total of €465 million in national funds, of which €415 million will support hydrogen projects and an additional €50 million to support industrial heat decarbonisation projects.
The IF25 NZT call is open for applications until 23 April 2026, 17:00 (CET), via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Applicants are strongly encouraged to attend the Info Day which will take place on 16 December. Successful applicants are expected to sign grant agreements by the first quarter of 2027.
For the IF25 Hydrogen Auction and IF25 Heat Auction, bidders have until 19 February 2026, 17:00 (CET) to apply via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Info Days for both auctions will take place on 10 December 2025. Successful bidders are expected to sign grant agreements within nine months after the call closure.
The Innovation Fund is one of the world's largest funding programmes for the demonstration and commercialisation of innovative low-carbon technologies, financed by revenues from the EU ETS. With an estimated budget of around €40 billion between 2020 and 2030), the Fund aims to create financial incentives for companies and public authorities to invest in cutting-edge low-carbon technologies and support Europe's transition to climate neutrality.
Counting all ongoing projects and those under grant agreement preparation, the Innovation Fund has currently awarded over €15.8 billion in support to more than 275 projects through its previous calls for proposals. Both Hydrogen and Heat auctions use a competitive, market-based approach and follow a pay-as-bid model. Bids are ranked by price within each topic and are awarded until the available budget is allocated. For the hydrogen auction, bids are ranked by price in euro per kilogram of hydrogen produced; for the heat auction, by price in euro per tonne of CO2 abated.
Under the auctions, Project Development Assistance (PDA) remains available for projects wanting to improve their maturity through high-quality technical and financial advisory support provided by the European Investment Bank. Furthermore, the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Seal will be awarded to projects that meet all evaluation criteria, including both those that are selected for funding and those that are not due to budgetary limitations. The Seal aims to facilitate high-quality projects access to additional public and private funding.
Questions and answers on the IF25 NZT Call
Questions and answers on the IF25 Auctions
EU Funding and Tenders Portal
Innovation Fund projects dashboard
IF25 NZT Call
IF25 Heat Auction Call
IF25 Hydrogen Auction Call
IF25 NZT Call Info Day
IF25 Heat Auction Info Day
IF25 Hydrogen Auction Info Day
Innovation Fund
By channelling €5.2 billion of EU ETS revenues into net-zero technologies, hydrogen and industrial heat decarbonisation, Europe is not just setting the stage for a greener future and technological leadership but investing in its own future. The first ever pilot auction of the Decarbonisation Bank, is delivering on one of the key pillars of the Clean Industrial Deal, opening the way for the € 100 billion that is foreseen to be channelled into the decarbonisation of our industry. This will support EU industry in becoming the global innovation leaders of tomorrow.
Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition
Innovation is the driving force that will power Europe’s journey to net-zero. With this new €5.2 billion call, we are backing the net-zero technologies and industries that will secure Europe’s leadership in the global clean-tech race. These investments will help scale up solutions that cut emissions, strengthen our competitiveness, and create sustainable jobs across the continent.
Wopke Hoekstra, Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth