Education in Europe

In the European Union education is the responsibility of Member States; European Union institutions play a supporting role. According to Art. 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Community

The EU also funds educational, vocational and citizenship-building programmes which encourage EU citizens to take advantage of opportunities which the EU offers its citizens to live, study and work in other countries. The best known of these is the Erasmus programme, under which more than 3,000,000 students have taken part in inter-university exchange and mobility over the last 20 years. Since 2000, conscious of the importance of Education and Training for their economic and social objectives, EU Member States have begun working together to achieve specific goals in the field of Education. By sharing examples of good policy practice, by taking part in Peer Learning activities, by setting benchmarks and by tracking progress against key indicators, the 28 Member States aim to respond coherently to common challenges, whilst retaining their individual sovereignty in the field of Education policy. This strategy is referred to as the Education and Training 2020 programme (ET2020), which is an update of the Education and Training 2010 programme. The European Union is also a partner in various inter-governmental projects, including the Bologna Process whose purpose is to create a European higher education area by harmonising academic degree structures and standards as well as academic quality assurance standards throughout EU Member States and in other European countries.

The European Union adopted its first education programme (the COMETT programme, designed to stimulate contacts and exchanges between universities and industry) in July 1987. This programme was rapidly followed by the ERASMUS programme, which promoted inter-university contacts and cooperation, as well as substantial student mobility (as, in 1989, did the "Youth for Europe" programme, the EU's first youth exchange support scheme). These programmes were adopted by the EU countries but with considerable support from the European Parliament which made budgets available even before the legal instruments had been adopted.

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