80% of SMEs in the European Union cannot find workers with the right skills.

Omissions

• The underlying Eurobarometer evidence is from 2023 (European Year of Skills survey), i.e. about three years older than the 20 October 2026 session; the Commission's own 2025 documents still cite 77-78% for the EU, so the figure has been carried forward rather than freshly measured.
• The claim rounds 77-78% up to 80% ('four out of five'), which slightly overstates the measured share.
• A more recent Commission Eurobarometer published on 1 June 2026 reports that 46% of European SMEs face challenges in finding workers with the right skills (in the context of recruitment, including of non-EU nationals), suggesting the '80%' framing is not supported by the most recent survey data available before the session.
• No source cited by the MEP; the claim merges several different survey questions (importance of skills vs. difficulty of recruiting).

Sources

• PrimaryEuropean Commission Staff Working Document SWD(2025) 95 (via employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu)'...ed difficulties in finding workers with the right skills. (vs 78% in the EU).'
• PrimaryEUR-Lex — Commission Staff Working Document SWD(2025) 138'Difficulties in staff recruitment for SMEs – Eurobarometer survey ... and scaleups also face difficulties in finding workers with the right skills'
• PrimaryEuropean Commission 2025 Country Report – Czechia'difficulties finding workers with the right skills. (vs EU: 77%)'
• PrimaryEurobarometer — European Year of Skills survey (September 2023)'95% of all SMEs say that it is very (82%) or moderately (13%) important for their business model to have workers with the right skills. However, three quarters ...'
• PrimaryEuropean Commission — Eurobarometer on European SMEs and recruitment (news release)'A new Eurobarometer survey reveals that 46% of European small and medium-sized enterprises face challenges in finding workers with the right skills'
• SecondaryELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy), citing Eurobarometer'In fact, in the EU as a whole, the vast majority of these businesses (78%) report that finding workers with the right skills is "very difficult"'