The history of European cooperation in education and training. Europe in the making – an example

Marking thirty years of European cooperation in the area of education and training the European Commission has published this book. It details how the Europe of education was born and how it was built over the last three decades, with its difficulties and its achievements, such as the adoption of the first cooperation programme in February 1976 or the launch of the first action programmes at the end of the 1980s (Comett, Erasmus, Petra, Lingua, Force, Tempus), which broadened the scope of cooperation and increased its potential impact at national level. Education was first enshrined in the Treaties in 1992 (Treaty of Maastricht), and it was on this now sound legal basis that the programmes of the 1990s were to be developed; this decade also saw the rise of the Europe of knowledge and the concept of lifelong learning and the launch of the Bologna process.

The Lisbon European Council of March 2000 finally moved education and training from the margins of Community action to the centre of the EU’s economic and social strategy for 2010.

The publication illustrates the unique nature of this cooperation which, since the beginning, has succeeded in combining Community action with respect for national competences in the field: Community cooperation in education has applied the principle of subsidiarity since the outset, even before the term was coined — bold and active subsidiarity, for the good of its citizens.

Not available electronically at the time of compilation of this index record.

European Commission: Press Release: IP/06/216: 1976-2006: Thirty years of European cooperation in education http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/212&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

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