A European initiative co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union to strengthen self-employment, digital resilience, and adaptability in a changing world of work.
In an increasingly digital and rapidly changing economy, freelancers and self-employed professionals are playing a growing role in shaping Europe’s labour market. Yet, this dynamic group often faces significant challenges — from adapting to new digital tools and remote work structures to managing fluctuating workloads and ensuring continuous professional development. The FREELANCER project, co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, was created to respond to these evolving realities by promoting innovation, employability, and lifelong learning across Europe.
Launched with a clear mission to bridge the skills gap and empower individuals to thrive in the digital age, FREELANCER provides training and tools tailored to the needs of freelancers, job-seekers, and entrepreneurs-to-be. The project’s ambition is to help individuals not only enter or re-enter the labour market but to do so with the confidence, digital readiness, and entrepreneurial mindset needed to succeed sustainably in self-employment.
The implementation of FREELANCER follows a coherent sequence of actions:
- Mapping and identifying skill gaps related to digital and entrepreneurial readiness for self-employment.
- Designing innovative, multilingual training materials that respond to real market needs.
- Developing a Digital Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform that makes all training materials freely available to learners, trainers, and VET institutions.
- Testing and validating the resources with at least 120 participants across partner countries, ensuring real-world usability and impact.
Beyond its direct training results, FREELANCER also contributes to a broader European effort to modernise VET systems. By aligning vocational education and training with the realities of a post-pandemic, digital-first economy, the project enhances the flexibility and responsiveness of learning systems and promotes open, inclusive access to upskilling opportunities. Its multilingual nature — with all outputs available in five languages — ensures that professionals and institutions across the EU can benefit equally.
The project is the result of a strong and complementary consortium:
- Smartwork (Estonia) – promoting smart and contemporary work practices;
- IDP SAS (Italy) – EU project management and training expertise;
- Institut de Haute Formation aux Politiques Communautaires – IHF (Belgium) – policy, education, and dissemination know-how;
- Internet Web Solutions – IWS (Spain) – IT development and digital learning;
- PARE (Estonia) – human resources and professional growth network;
- University of Dubrovnik (Croatia) – higher education and research excellence.
Together, the partners have created a European ecosystem of learning and cooperation that supports freelancers in adapting to new professional paradigms, while simultaneously offering VET stakeholders practical tools to modernise their training offer.
As the project concludes, FREELANCER stands as a concrete example of how European collaboration can transform challenges into opportunities, bridging education, technology, and employability in a single framework. All project outputs — including the Mapping Report, Training Modules, and the Digital OER Platform — are freely accessible and available in multiple languages on the project website:
🌐 www.freelancer-training.eu FREELANCER contributes to a Europe where individuals have the skills and confidence to design their own professional futures — empowered, connected, and ready for what comes next.
