Business transfer is treated as a legal and financial question
In 2024 the EU-27 counted almost 8.9 million self-employed people aged 55 or over. Not all of them run a company that can be handed on, and not all of them will retire soon. But the European Commission draws the conclusion plainly in its Recommendation of 22 June 2026: over a ten-year period the number of companies potentially affected by a transfer runs into the millions.
Sources
Commission Recommendation C(2026) 3799 of 22 June 2026, recital 3 and footnotes 1 and 2. In Germany, around 224,000 owners of small businesses planned a transfer within two years. In France, some 700,000 companies will need to be transferred within a decade.
The support available at that point is advisory. Valuation, tax structuring, contract drafting, matching platforms. All of it addresses the company and the outgoing owner.
The person who would take the company on receives almost nothing. A skilled worker or a graduate may know the trade well and still lack what running the company demands: reading a balance sheet, planning liquidity through the transfer year, holding a workforce together through a change of ownership, deciding what the green and digital transition means for the business model. These are learnable. They are not taught in any structured qualification aimed at successors.
The policy framework already points this way
Commission Recommendation C(2026) 3799 separates two things. It recommends training and mentorship for business owners, and it separately recommends promoting business transfer through education at appropriate levels, naming women, young people and individuals from diverse backgrounds as groups to reach.
The first half is largely in place. Chambers, advisory bodies and consultants work with owners across Europe. The second half is not. There is no vocational qualification anywhere in the eight participating countries that prepares a successor for what a handover requires.
The Council Recommendation on vocational education and training (2020/C 417/01), the Osnabrück Declaration and its successor the Herning Declaration 2026-2030, the Union of Skills (COM(2025) 90) and the Competitiveness Compass all point towards VET that answers economic change. VET4Succession applies that to one specific change with a known timeline.
The pathway
EQF 4, Junior Succession Lab
An entry route for learners in initial vocational education who could later consider taking over a company. It introduces the economics of a small business and what a handover involves.
EQF 5, SME Successor Programme
The main route. It is aimed at skilled workers, technicians and employees already in a company, and covers the business, financial, legal and leadership content a successor needs, with a substantial share of learning inside the company itself.
EQF 6, two routes
A dual business transfer specialisation of 20 to 30 ECTS for higher education institutions with work-based programmes, and business transfer modules inside master craftsperson training. Both keep the learner in the company.
From diagnosis to learning plan
The SME Transfer Readiness Check is completed with the owner and looks at the company and the handover situation. The SME Successor Readiness Profile is completed by the learner. Both feed into one Business Transfer Learning Plan, which sets out which modules and which work-based tasks that particular learner needs.
Both instruments are educational diagnostics. They do not value a company, they do not give legal or tax advice, and they do not decide who is suitable to take a company on. That decision stays with the parties involved.
The people who would teach
Curricula do not deliver themselves. VET4Succession would prepare two groups.
Business Transfer Learning Facilitators are teachers and trainers qualified to run the succession pathway and to work with the diagnostic instruments. Thirty would be trained through a train-the-trainer programme hosted in rotating nodes. The profile itself is new, and the proposal would describe it in a form other providers can adopt.
Company mentors are experienced owners and managers, prepared through a short structured programme, who accompany a successor inside the company. Between 40 and 50 would be prepared.
Business Transfer Labs
Each node would run one Business Transfer Lab. A lab is not a building. It is a working arrangement in which a VET provider, a chamber or business association, and a group of companies test the curricula together with learners who are in a real succession situation.
At least 180 SMEs would take part in consultations, and the eight labs would report what worked and what did not. Those reports would decide which parts of the pathway are recommended for wider use. Two editions of a Blended Transnational Succession Challenge would bring learners from several nodes together on shared cases.
Recognition
Completed units would be recognised as micro-credentials, described according to the European approach to micro-credentials. Where a partner institution supports it, credentials would be issued digitally through European Digital Credentials for Learning. At least three countries would work towards anchoring the qualifications in national or regional regulation, so that they continue after the project period.
Digital learning environment
The learning environment would be built on the Centre for Digital Education at Pomeranian University of Slupsk. It would also hold the open educational resources, so that the curricula, the instruments and the facilitator programme remain available to providers outside the consortium.
Cross-cutting commitments
Women are underrepresented among business successors, and the recruitment of learners into the pathway would be designed to address that directly. Access for learners with disabilities and for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds is part of the design of each route, not an addition to it. The green and digital transition is treated as what it usually is at the point of handover: the moment when a business model can actually be changed. Competence descriptions follow EntreComp, DigComp and GreenComp.
How the work would be organised
| WP | Title | Lead (co-lead) | Months |
|---|---|---|---|
| WP1 | Management, CoVE Establishment and Quality Assurance | HP | M1–M48 |
| WP2 | Evidence Base, Competence Framework and Regional Education Strategies | UPSL (WKO) | M3–M36 |
| WP3 | Curricula, Micro-credentials and Capacity Building | CMAR (STVG) | M16–M42 |
| WP4 | Business Transfer Labs, Enterprise Consultations and Learner Certification | HWKD | M18–M46 |
| WP5 | Exploitation, Sustainability and Dissemination | VCCIC (GENCAT, MAGN) | M1–M48 |
Two independent external evaluations would take place, in month 24 and month 48. Partner abbreviations are explained on the consortium page.