WindEurope, the Brussels-based association representing the European wind industry, has joined the European Literacy Coalition, a grouping set up by the European Commission to strengthen literacy across the continent, the association said on 23 September.
The Coalition was formally launched in Brussels on 22 September under the Commission’s Union of Skills and Action Plan on Basic Skills. Its founding document, the Warsaw Memorandum, calls for a broader understanding of literacy that includes critical thinking as well as media, information, digital and AI literacy, built through long-term cooperation between education, civil society, public authorities and industry.
WindEurope pointed to a decline in reading skills across Europe — average PISA scores across OECD countries fell by 28 points between 2015 and 2025 — alongside a labour market challenge: the European wind industry employs 480,000 people today and will need 600,000 by 2030. The association also cited its own research showing millions of Europeans have been exposed to misleading claims about wind energy, with a monitored anti-wind network generating tens of millions of views.
The association said it will focus on three areas: bringing real-world energy challenges into schools through STEM learning, building resilience to energy disinformation by giving learners tools to assess claims and evidence, and forming wider partnerships with schools, libraries, municipalities and other industries.
“Europe will only remain a great place to live if we preserve what binds us together: literacy,” WindEurope’s Chief Policy Officer Pierre Tardieu said. “It allows us to understand one another and work together on the complex challenges of our time.”
