Skills for Europe’s competitiveness

With his management team and all staff, Jürgen has led Cedefop to strengthen its position as a go-to ally for the EU institutions, social partners, researchers and practitioners when it comes to analysing the impacts of megatrends on the labour market, on skills, and on training ecosystems – and on how vocational education and training enables a fair digital and green transition.

Jürgen has a background in human-resources management with particular emphasis on learning and education, earned his MSc in economics at the University of Hamburg, and his PhD in business administration from the University of Vienna. 

Before joining Cedefop in 2021, he worked at the London School of Economics (UK), Sciences Po Strasbourg (France) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra (Italy) and Seville (Spain). Ralph holds master degrees in Business Administration from the Ecole de Management Strasbourg (France) and the University of Tübingen (Germany) and earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Strasbourg, BETA/CNRS and the University of Tübingen (summa cum laude), for which he received 4 PhD thesis prizes. 

He attended Keele University in the UK and holds a Ph.D in industrial relations and human resource management, focusing on a comparative study of the demand for EU migrant workers in Sweden and the UK. He also has an MA in European industrial relations and human resource management and a BA in human geography and human resource management. 

Before joining Cedefop, since 2013, she worked as researcher at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in the Competence Centre on Microeconomic Evaluation (CC-ME), where she has been the coordinator of the Centre for Research on Impact Evaluation (CRIE).
She has been a visiting research fellow at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a lecturer at the Doctoral School of Economics at Sapienza University of Rome. She obtained a M.Sc. in Statistical Sciences and a Ph.D. in Economic Sciences at Sapienza University of Rome. 
Her main research interests lie in the fields of labour economics, applied micro-econometrics, and policy evaluation

For example, she advocates for European recognition of VET qualifications, so that everyone in every Member State can find work. People with practical experience must be able to actively contribute ideas and have a say in the policies that directly affect them, whether these relate to work, education or the climate transition.

In 1987 he was appointed as an instructor of Carpentry and Cabinetmaking in Technical Schools. In 2004, he was promoted to the position of Inspector. After serving at all levels within the Directorate of Secondary TVET, he assumed the position of Director in 2011.

He represents the Ministry of Education at the DGVT Meetings. He also serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Human Resource Development Authority of Cyprus. In April 2026, he was appointed as the National Representative of Cyprus in the ReferNet Network. 

He has served as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Management of European Lifelong Learning Programmes and of the Higher Hotel Institute of Cyprus, as well as Cyprus’s representative on the ETF Board.

Previously, Manuela Geleng has held several other managerial positions in the Commission. Prior to joining the European Commission, she worked in the private sector and for the United Nations Development  Programme.