Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-12-Speech-3-179"
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"en.20051012.17.3-179"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Bono’s report comes at a crucial moment for the Lisbon Strategy. We are in the middle of the road and the role of education and training in implementing the strategy now is being increasingly discussed and supported. I am glad to note that such support is also expressed in this report and in this House, in particular with regard to Parliament’s position on the financial perspective and on education within this framework. I think that Europe’s greatest assets are brains, knowledge, skills and the creativity of our citizens. In particular, I want to thank Mr Bono for his excellent work. The ideas developed in this report will be very helpful for the Commission.
As you rightly state, education is the cornerstone of the Lisbon process. Indeed, there will be no serious increase of growth, innovation, employment and social cohesion in the Union without an increasingly efficient investment in human resources through education and training. Your report helps us very much to voice that central message to policy makers.
The report underlines a number of areas which are of major strategic importance for the success of the Lisbon strategy. Let me emphasise just three such areas, where we consider that substantial progress needs to be made in the near future.
Firstly, with regard to lifelong learning strategies, Member States have committed themselves to developing such strategies by 2006. We will continue to follow national developments in this area very closely. More and more countries are defining national strategies but implementation remains the key challenge across Europe.
Secondly, we appreciate the report’s focus on the needs of the less advantaged, as well as target groups such as young people – as is required now by the European Youth Pact – and jobseekers. I am particularly concerned about the lack of progress as compared to the EU benchmarks, which relate most closely to social inclusion.
Unless further significant efforts are made in the areas of early school leaving, completion of upper secondary education and the key competences, a larger proportion of the next generation will face social exclusion at a great cost to themselves, the economy and to society. The Commission plans to adopt a draft recommendation on the issue of key competences for lifelong learning, which we hope will make a vital contribution to the necessary reforms in this important area.
Thirdly, I shall refer to the issue of improving governance. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all in making lifelong learning a reality is the need to reform the modes of governance of the systems. Governance needs to be coherent and coordinated, requires synergy between the relevant ministries, strong social dialogue and the awareness and active involvement of other key stakeholders. We intend to follow up on these areas closely, through concrete peer learning activities whereby Member States support each other in the implementation of reforms by learning from the experiences of other Member States. In parallel, we are continuing to develop the European area of education and training. We are currently consulting on a proposal for the European qualifications framework, which we hope will provide a very concrete contribution to support greater mobility of students, trainees and workers.
I wish to thank Parliament for its continued support, especially with regard to the priority given to education and training in the context of the discussions on the financial perspectives."@en1
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