Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-034"
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"First of all – and this is sincerely meant – I should like to thank the Members and their rapporteurs for their in-depth work and for studying the Commission proposals in a spirit of solidarity. It is very important for Parliament and the Commission to work side by side. As others have stressed, it is not easy sometimes, given the lack of legislation, to establish a system for collaborating directly with Parliament in the field of education. I regret this and hope that it will change. I have already said several times to Parliament, when I have appeared before the relevant parliamentary committee, that I will keep it abreast of any new developments and that I would welcome initiatives from Members to enable the Commission to take account of Parliament's proposals, which are very important in this particular field.
As far as the detailed survey on international mobility is concerned, I think, Mrs de Sarnez, that this analysis is something that will have to be done mainly by the OECD and Unesco. We are in discussions with these two institutions, but, to conclude their analyses successfully, they need to overcome problems with the comparability of statistics and statistics which are outdated and which have therefore been overtaken by events. But we think that these are the institutions that should do this. We will be collaborating closely with them.
Turning now to the quality of the reception provided, administrative procedures, accommodation and grants, I should like to reiterate that the French Presidency organised a major meeting of education ministers at the Sorbonne who spent a whole day discussing obstacles to mobility. All of the results were put on paper and signed by our Heads of State and Government at the Nice Summit. The high-level political decision exists. The problem that we have is that progress is not being made as rapidly on the ground because these are issues which need to be addressed by national governments. And I am not even talking about education ministers because often it is Social Security ministers or Home Office ministers who need to get involved here. We therefore need to exert friendly pressure on our governments to remove these barriers to mobility, which often are relatively trivial. We are however making progress here too. Let me give you an example: in some countries the grants awarded by the State to their students were not exportable, which seriously hampered mobility. However, most of the ministers concerned have taken measures making it possible for their students to continue to benefit from a grant whilst they are studying abroad.
My final point is languages. As you know, 2001 was the European Year of Languages. This has set things moving. I say this full of admiration for the speedy response of many Education ministers, who have undertaken reforms of their school systems to enable children to learn one or more foreign languages from an early age. I can tell you that at the Barcelona Summit the Heads of State and Government adopted our slogan of ‘mother tongue plus two’.
Things are moving then and progress is being made, not quickly enough, but we are going in the right direction. With Parliament’s help, I am sure that we will be able to move forward more quickly towards our shared vision.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the communication which was adopted last July by the Commission sought to launch the debate on cooperation with third countries, taking into account many of the points which have been made by honourable Members: globalisation, increasing international mobility, Europe's lack of competitiveness in the international education market, and the need to foster an understanding of other cultures amongst our own young people and those in third countries.
The Commission reiterated that cooperation with third countries is based on Article 149 of the Treaty. I would also add that above and beyond the Treaty this cooperation is one of the ways of fostering dialogue between civilisations. On this basis, the Commission drew two conclusions: firstly, that if we build bridges between universities within the European Union – which is what we are in the process of doing – we also need to build bridges between these European universities and those in other continents. This is precisely the subject of the report before us.
Secondly, we must ensure that our work in this area is more visible, so as to promote Europe as a centre of excellence and so as to attract students seeking an international education. We have identified two objectives: firstly, to train high-quality human resources in the partner countries and in the Community through our system of reciprocal development of human resources. We do not want a brain drain, but we do want the students who have been trained over here – not in one single country but in several because this is where the European added value that we have to offer lies – to return to their countries and, in a context of globalisation, we want them to know what is at stake when, as adults, they are called upon to make decisions in the private or public sector. Secondly, obviously we want to promote the Community as an international centre of excellence for studying. We have centres of excellence – they exist – but we need to link them up and make them more competitive because they will already be well known.
We are making progress, ladies and gentlemen, by taking specific action. The first specific action is the Tempus programme, which has been extended to our MEDA partners. This initiative is, of course, part of the Barcelona Process, but it also fits in with the idea of strengthening cooperation in the field of higher education, which is the subject of the communication.
The rapporteur mentioned the ALFA programme. I can tell her that we are in the process of developing ALFA Plus for the countries of Central and South America. Within the institutional framework of inter-university relations, ALFA Plus proposes to award more than 3 000 study grants to postgraduate students, who will be admitted to our universities. You can see that we are working at a very practical level to develop pilot actions in other continents. Moreover, we intend to continue working on similar initiatives. We fully agree with the basic analysis of the European Parliament and the Member States. Here, for once, we have a wonderful unanimity on the issue which concerns us.
Furthermore, the Commission has taken note of the requests to draft a framework proposal in response to the analyses that have been made. We are already working on this and I might even be able to launch the proposal this year. You will understand, Mrs de Sarnez, ladies and gentlemen, that I am not at liberty to divulge the details now, but we will most certainly take account of the many ideas contained in Mrs de Sarnez’s report. I will of course keep the parliamentary committee concerned informed.
Mr President, with your permission, I should now like to respond very briefly to some of the proposals made by Mrs de Sarnez. I think that I have already answered her questions on the pilot actions, ALFA, Tempus, and so on.
The rapporteur asks us to analyse quality in universities and to establish joint courses of study with joint diplomas, using the ECTS validation scheme. Well, that is what we are in the process of doing. We are setting up pilot projects whereby three or four universities from three or four countries will collaborate on the basis of a joint curriculum leading to a European Masters degree. There are plans for the university chancellors to meet for a major conference in Berlin in 2003 where they will make presentations on the pilot actions, which will have been launched by then; some of them will get underway during the current academic year, but in the majority of cases it will be during the 2002/2003 academic year. We will, therefore, analyse the initial results in Berlin, and I very much hope that the initiative will snowball and that, when they see how positive it is, many universities will want to be involved in this new system."@en1
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