Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-25-Speech-1-173"
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"en.20060925.19.1-173"2
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".
Mr President, this is a package of issues that shows that education and training is getting a momentum. I am sure that EQF is one of
points for the coming years. When I was asked about the top issues in my portfolio for the next five years, I said that EQF is one of them and so I think we are delivering it now; not only speaking about it.
First of all, I would like to express gratitude to the rapporteur and to the Employment Committee, for the excellent report prepared in consultation with other committees, which reflects the Commission’s consultation paper from last year. It gives us the opportunity to reflect the formal proposal adopted this month, because I am sure that lifelong learning and mobility are crucial to our competitiveness and social cohesion in the European Union.
The Commission has always taken positive steps to make progress in these fields. However, in practice people in Europe still too often face obstacles when they try to move from one country to another to learn or work, and when they want to become citizens more than tourists in the Union. They also face difficulties when they want to build on previous education and training and move, for example, from vocational education and training into higher education. The EQF will help to solve that problem. It will improve transparency and make different national qualifications systems or qualifications frameworks more understandable across Europe. By helping different systems to talk to each other, it will promote access to education and training and increase mobility for learning or work. It could also be instrumental outside Europe, because when I was in Moscow or, in June, in Canada, both countries – Russia and Canada – expressed interest in knowing more about this instrument because they would like it to inspire their policies.
We already have legal instruments, such as the directives on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. The Europass initiative has been mentioned today, which also pursues similar goals. However, these instruments alone are not sufficient, which is why the EQF is an important further step to improve the situation.
Our proposal already integrates many of the comments and recommendations contained in Mr Mann’s report; I am sure we can agree on that. I therefore consider that Parliament and the Commission are very much following the same line on this issue. The document on which you have commented was a consultation paper issued in July last year. Since then, we have moved further on the road towards a more practical and user-friendly instrument.
Mr Mann is right to say that we should do more on vocational education and training. I would like to remind you that it came into the treaties in the Treaty of Rome, in 1957; and higher education not until the Maastricht Treaty; in 1999 we started the Bologna process, and only later on the Copenhagen process. Now we have two parallel processes, which feed well into the European qualifications framework, but we need it to get there in order to start the real implementation of important clauses in our treaties. We are doing that now: in the Bologna process, 45 countries; in Copenhagen, 32. Two weeks ago I was in Switzerland and they want to join the Copenhagen process. So those are good messages for our work.
EQF will provide the full benefit only if correctly implemented by Member States. They will need to link their qualification systems to the EQF. I am convinced that our proposal provides the common language and the means to develop the necessary mutual trust, which is the basis for real implementation of such an instrument. That strategy is also helpful to employers and individuals in comparing qualifications across the Union and across diverse education and training systems.
I am sure that this key initiative is helping people in Europe to face the challenges and reap the benefits of a knowledge-based society. We are looking forward not only to further discussions but also to further cooperation following the recent adoption of the proposal."@en1
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