Policies

EDUCATION

The European area of knowledge: a political priority for the EPP-ED Group

The enactment of the strategies and objectives set out at the European Councils in Lisbon, Stockholm and Nice makes the European area of knowledge a priority policy to be pursued by the European Union.

The EPP-ED Group has always successfully called for all the specific policies, measures, actions and programmes in this area to be endowed with the appropriate financial and operational resources in order to create the conditions in which every EU citizen has genuine access to the information society and participates fully in it.

The Community Acquis in the field of education

From a legal basis ...

In the European Union, each Member State is fully responsible for managing its education system and the content of educational programmes, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. Under Articles 149 and 150 of the Treaty the role of the Community is to contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action in order, among other things, to develop the European dimension in education, encourage mobility and promote European-level cooperation between schools and universities.

... to Community action programmes

Socrates
This programme covers all fields of education, all age brackets and every level of ability. Its objectives are to:

• strengthen the European dimension in education at all levels;
• improve knowledge of foreign languages;
• promote cooperation and mobility in the field of education;
• encourage the use of new technologies in education;
• promote equal opportunities in all sectors of education.

The Socrates programme is implemented through the following actions:

• Comenius: school education: nursery, primary and secondary schools (to enhance the quality of teaching, strengthen the European dimension and promote language learning);
• Erasmus: higher education, university and post-university education (to promote student mobility and language learning);
• Grundtvig: adult education and other educational pathways (to supplement Comenius and Erasmus by facilitating the integration of adults unable to access the school system);
• Lingua: language learning (to promote the targeted learning and teaching of languages);
• Minerva: information and communication technologies in education (to encourage the use of information and communication technologies, multimedia and open distance learning).

eLearning
The objective of the eLearning initiative is to speed up adaptation of the EU's education and training systems to the information society and digital culture.
eLearning therefore endeavours to better equip schools with multimedia computers, to train European teachers in digital technologies, to develop European educational services and software and to speed up the networking of schools and teachers.

Erasmus Mundus
This programme is intended to strengthen international links in higher education, by enabling students and visiting scholars from around the world to engage in postgraduate study at European universities and by encouraging the mobility of European students and scholars. The basic features of the programme include a global scholarship scheme for third country nationals, linked to the creation of EU Masters Courses at European universities.

Improving foreign language learning is a priority objective of all the programmes and actions and has been the subject of a specific programme - namely the European Year of Languages in 2001.

Establishing a European area of lifelong learning ...

... is a priority and a basic principle of education policy. The EPP-ED Group is striving to ensure that all Community activities in this field are pursued with an eye to visibility, European added value and above all using the appropriate resources.


Véronique Donck