On October 9^th, 2025, the ELCA Presidium has approved the annual plan 2026. This plan describes the actions for next year in our political lobby, common activities with our national and associate members and services for the members of the ELCA Committee of Firms. Looking at the changing societal demands towards our sector and at the same time the challenges our companies experience regarding organizing their workforce, the focus next year of ELCA is summarized in the annual theme for 2026: Workforce development: skilling and upskilling.

ELCA is proud to be the platform where 27 national and associate members and 190 members of the Committee of Firms meet. We add the European and international dimension to their work by exchanging on public affairs actions and on entrepreneurial topics. Also due to the topics on the societal agenda, that directly link to our work, the landscape garden sector is gaining on importance. The landscape garden sector has to keep up with the pace of societal needs. Nature-based solutions, that in essence are created and maintained by our sector, are seen as the answer for challenges related to climate, biodiversity and public health. Our sector must prepare and develop itself to be in the position that we turn these challenges into real solutions and business case opportunities. ELCA wants to take the lead here. 

agenda setting
For agenda setting our interests, the eyes of ELCA are pointed at the European institutions. The work in the current European Semester 2024-2029 is now in full swing. The EU Green Deal remained on the agenda and is important for us, because Climate and Biodiversity are two key-elements in this  Deal and closely related to the nature-based solutions that we create and maintain. The EU Nature Restoration Regulation, part of the Green Deal, has entered into force in the meantime. ELCA is appointed in the expert group that advises the European Commission on its implementation. Furthermore, ELCA responded on public consultations on for example the Evaluation EU Public Procurement Directives, the EU Water Resilience Strategy, the EU Affordable Housing Plan, the EU Agenda for Cities, the Bio-Economy Strategy, the Union of Skills and the Roadmap towards Nature Credits. We continue working on these themes in 2026 and align ourselves to new topics and initiatives of the European Commission. 

annual theme
The Presidium adopted the proposal ‘Workforce development; skilling and upskilling’ as annual theme 2026. Finding enough interested people for a career in the landscape garden sector and having the right skills available for now and in the future, are big challenges for companies in our sector. If we look at this from a European perspective, then we see differences between countries and opportunities to learn from each other. It is crucial that we support the development of professional standards for landscape gardening in all EU member states and that we use the showcases of frontrunning countries to accelerate this. Vocational training and lifelong learning are thriving forces here. In the framework of the Union of Skills, ELCA has presented its ambition to EU Commissioner Mînzatu to establish a European network of Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE’s). We have already good experiences with setting up such a network in our E-Plug project. Our aim is to expand this network in a way that every European country has at least one ‘lighthouse CoVE’ that sets an example to further enrolment on national level. This project will be elaborated in cooperation with our national and associate members and we are looking for funding this project with budget from the EU. 

We hope you are curious about our ambitions for next year and that you will follow us closely. If you want to know more about the actions in our annual plan 2026, contact Secretary-General Egbert Roozen by mail contact@elca.info or call (+32) 468 35 11 91.