Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-08-Speech-5-033"
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"en.20000908.4.5-033"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would like to thank your rapporteur, Mrs Gutiérrez-Cortines for her work, not only for stressing the positive aspects, but also for making certain criticisms which the Commission has examined and taken on board, understanding that the comments were made in a constructive spirit, to encourage us to ‘do better’, as one of you just commented, both in the way we deal with the subject of lifelong education and training and the way we organise this type of operation in the context of the ‘European Year’ together with you and the Member States.
Ladies and gentlemen, like your rapporteur, I regret that some of the publicity materials were available only in three languages, but this was a difficult decision which had to be taken for purely technical reasons in view of the budget and the staffing resources available, as all the language versions of publications issued on behalf of the Commission had to be scrupulously checked.
I would like to stress, however, that other materials, particularly posters, were available in all the official languages of the European Union and that we gave national bodies the opportunity to add other languages according to their own particular needs. We shall obviously be making a special effort for the European Year of Languages, which we are preparing at the moment, to respect the principle of linguistic pluralism as much as possible. I feel this is necessary and legitimate.
I should also like, on behalf of the Commission, to express our thanks to Mrs Evans who was given the task of drawing up the opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and other Members of Parliament who contributed to the quality of this debate both in committee and in plenary.
I should like to devote a few moments, ladies and gentlemen, to responding to a number of criticisms outlined in Mrs Gutiérrez-Cortines’ report, and stressed by several of you, particularly Mr Herman Schmidt. Naturally I should like to do so by highlighting the positive aspects of this European Year of Lifelong Learning. It is an initiative which, as the report indicates, was very favourably received by Parliament and by the Council. Even though the charge can be levelled that we should have done better yet, it is an initiative which has had a mobilising effect, to judge by the number of people that have been interested and involved in this initiative, and has also had the effect of harnessing additional financial resources which were used in a more decentralised fashion.
It is a European initiative which we can consider to have been successful on the whole, since it was implemented in this decentralised fashion, closer to the citizens, having involved the national, regional and local authorities in each Member State. Mr Posselt mentioned the spirit and the meaning of subsidiarity, and I noted his concern. I also noted, in the Commission report, in your report, that the initiative engaged the interests of many schools, universities, businesses and associations, not only in the world of education, but also organisations involved in the economy, in combating social exclusion or concerned with rural life.
I also think, however, ladies and gentlemen, that it is an initiative which has enabled the idea of lifelong education and training, the ambition and the need for it, to emerge from the specialist field of education and training and to gain wider currency among a wider public. I think it was Mrs Klass who stressed this point earlier.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must continue to bear these positive aspects in mind. Now, as promised, I should like to devote some time to answering the set of criticisms expressed in the report. Firstly, I should like to outline the approach adopted by the Commission in determining the level of detail that the report would go into, bearing in mind that a budget of EUR 8 million was allocated for the operation. This is not inconsiderable, but it is not a vast sum either. The Commission wanted to issue a succinct report giving an idea of the content of the European Year of Lifelong Learning and summing up its achievements and impact in a clear manner. We included statistical data, including, of course, figures for the deployment of the budget, which I have just mentioned, but I must state that it is primarily a political impact report.
To a great extent, the Commission services based this report on an external assessment conducted by a company which, by virtue of its network covering all the participant countries, seemed to me to be able to make an objective analysis of the way this year was perceived by operators in our various countries. The qualitative assessment was based on wide sampling of the projects with additional interviews with national bodies and, subsequently, with the initiators or promoters of these projects at grass roots. The Commission services made the full text of this external assessment available to your rapporteur. Let me add that it is also, of course, possible to consult the archives regarding administration of project budgets.
Your report, Mrs Gutiérrez-Cortines, and some of you discussed this just now, particularly Mrs Livari, points out a number of delays in the implementation of the European Year of Lifelong Learning, particularly with regard to the distribution of brochures. You must remember that the European Parliament and Council decision regarding this European Year of Lifelong Learning was one of the very first texts adopted under the codecision procedure, and that, in practice, it took some time to adjust to this new procedure. The decision was not formally adopted until the end of October 1995, i.e. only a few weeks before the start of the year itself. This had a perceptible effect on the Commission’s ability to take action. This initial delay, particularly regarding the signature of a contract with advertising service and product suppliers, continued to have effects throughout the year.
Similarly, the first call for projects had to be initiated in an extremely informal manner, with the cooperation of national bodies. It was signed in order to implement a project which did not yet exist officially, and once again this provides an objective explanation for some of the gaps highlighted in your report and, unfortunately, the effects of these gaps. I think it was Mr McCormick who mentioned the problems that promoters at grass roots level had in implementing projects. These were clearly the results down the line of the initial delay, which I have just explained."@en1
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