Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-14-Speech-1-063"
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"en.20010514.7.1-063"2
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". – Mr President, I am sure across this House, and between Parliament, the Commission and the Council, we all agree education is important. President Kennedy said of America: "Our progress as a Union can be no swifter than our progress in education." If that was true for America then, it is certainly true for Europe now.
The single market requires a much more mobile workforce than we currently have. Mobility in Europe is less than half that of the United States. We must make our workforce more mobile, and that means more resources at a European level for careers advice and for work experience. I am quite sure that the careers services across Europe do not have enough resources to alert students to the opportunities in the single market of Europe.
I would say, however, that it is not just the Commission that can do things. Let me suggest one way in which this Parliament could help. We support, of course, educational exchanges of Erasmus, Socrates and so on in the European Educational Institute in Florence, but not enough students get the opportunity to experience Europe.
I have long thought that the EUR 100m we spend every year on the use of this building for one week a month is a terrible waste of resources. I suggest that we give some thought to turning this building into a European university. That would be good for the students of Europe, the City of Strasbourg, France, this Parliament and Europe.
I am sure we also all agree that education's prime responsibility lies with, and within, the Member States. We should not forget that prime responsibility for education rests with students and scholars themselves. We should also do our best to give as much autonomy as we can to schools and colleges. The question we have to address is: what can Europe do? What can we add to the educational business?
The very existence of this debate shows that in the European Parliament, and indeed with the Commission and the Council, we have been pushing for more attention to be paid to the role of Europe in education. The prosperity of our Continent depends upon the level of education offered to our citizens.
The other reports we are debating this evening deal with the present and the future. My report deals primarily with the past. Some of it is critical, but it is critical of what happened in the past rather than what is happening now. My report is: White Paper "Teaching and learning – Towards the learning society". That is a very impressive title, but I am not too sure that the report was that positive.
After Lisbon and Stockholm, we are left in no doubt as to the importance Europe places on developing a knowledge economy. I am sure that with Commissioner Reding and her team future Commission activity in response to the increased priority for education agreed at the Lisbon and Stockholm Summits will be better than that detailed in my report. I am afraid that after reading the Commission Communication, I finished with not much more of an idea as to how far Europe had actually come towards the learning society, and which direction we wished to go. Sadly, I found the document vague, indicative of a lack of any real action over past years, although there were some notable exceptions.
The main objectives which the Commission tried to attain in the implementation of its White Paper seemed laudable: developing employability and boosting knowledge potential. I am not quite sure what was meant by helping to build a people's Europe – that seemed to be a vogue phrase of a few years ago.
Unfortunately, the Commission's report did not really detail any concrete progress made by the Commission in the five objectives set out. It was rather enthusiastic, but vague in terms of the impact of certain actions. What we and the public – and certainly we as the budgetary authority – want to know is how much was spent? How much of it was new money (as opposed to funds already in existing programmes)? What was the European added value? What results were achieved? And what lessons were learned for the future? I ask the Commission to ensure that we have that information so that in future we as the budgetary authority can press for more funding for this very important work.
There are certainly many projects mentioned which are worthy of further exploration: the European credit transfer system, for instance. But as the debate we had earlier this evening shows us, 40 years on from the start of the EU, 15 years after the Single European Act, we cannot yet say there is mutual recognition of academic qualifications across Europe
There are some things that can and should be done at a European level. Europe with its richness of linguistic diversity presents problems as well as strengths. I would say: let us be realistic, rather than too idealistic. Can we ask the Member States to insist that nobody goes into higher education, unless they have a qualification in a modern language other than their own? Because in some Member States that is not yet a requirement. We certainly need to do more work on IT, but that is being addressed in other reports. I will not deal with that."@en1
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