The Peer Review was hosted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection and focused on entrepreneurship training for the unemployed.

In Austria, the pilot project “Entrepreneurship Lab” was launched in 2017 to train unemployed people registered with Public Employment Services (PES) to set up their own business. One of the objectives of the pilot project was to see what new forms of work would emerge from the trained participants and set up networking groups. The support focused on development of skills needed to cope with the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with respect to digitalisation and new technologies.

The majority of the participants were long-term unemployed and people over 45 years of age. Two thirds of the participants of the first group set up new companies within six months after the end of the support. Many of the companies created focused on service innovations, often internet-based and social media related. Some of them were profit-making, while others were non-profit oriented.

During the Peer Review, the following topics were discussed:

• The key features of entrepreneurship training for the unemployed and the main challenges to delivering support in different settings (urban vs rural).
• Competences and characteristics that are required or desirable among participants to achieve positive labour market outcomes. The steps needed to be taken to identify and engage this target group.
• The potential legal obstacles/ challenges with new business models, new forms of work arising from this type of training and ways to overcome them.
• Ways of ensuring the sustainability of this type of training (e.g. with regard to facilities, trainers and financial incentives or monetary support).