Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

This Communication follows up the Commission’s proposal for the budgetary means and policy priorities for the period 2007-2013. It describes the Commission’s intentions for a new generation of Community programmes for mobility and cooperation in education and training to replace the Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci and Tempus III programmes when they expire at the end of 2006. It shows how the new generation will contribute to the Commission’s priorities for the period to 2013, in particular to achieving sustainable development within the European Union and stability and prosperity in the neighbouring countries.

The new generation will consist of:

– a new Integrated Programme for mobility and co-operation in lifelong learning for the EU Member States, the EEA/EFTA countries and the candidate countries, covering education and training together; and

– a new Tempus Plus programme for cooperation between Member States and countries bordering the Union and the existing Tempus countries, covering the whole spectrum of education and training.

The new programmes will respond to important policy developments in the field at European level that have taken place since the existing programme generation was created in the late 1990s. The Lisbon European Council of 2000 set the core goal of= making Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010, while nonetheless strengthening social cohesion, and accorded education and training a central role in reaching this aim. The intergovernmental processes launched at Bologna and Copenhagen seek to improve coherence, quality and transferability in higher education and in vocational training, and explicitly acknowledge the important role the Community programmes will play in making them a success. In 2003, the Commission launched a “New Neighbourhood” strategy to reinforce the prosperity, stability and security of the countries bordering the enlarged European Union. All these major policy developments, and the other factors set out in the body of the Communication, need to be reflected in the design of the new programmes.

In line with the growing importance of cooperation in education and training, and in response to massive unfulfilled demand, the new generation of internal and external programmes will be significantly more ambitious than at present, as the Commission’s new financial perspectives proposal makes clear. The Integrated Programme for lifelong learning would see a very significant increase in decentralised mobility actions for individual citizens and in partnerships between institutions. Its targets would include:

– At least 10% of school pupils and teachers involved in Comenius 2007-13.

– At least 3 million Erasmus students by 2010.

– At least 150,000 Leonardo trainee placements per year by 2013.

– At least 50,000 adults learning and teaching abroad per year by 2013 and the participation of at least one in five structured adult education providers in European cooperation by the end of the programme.

The Integrated Programme will be divided into four sectoral programmes: Comenius for school education; Erasmus for all forms of learning at university level; Leonardo da Vinci for initial and continuing vocational education and training; and Grundtvig for adult education. In order to reinforce synergies between education and training, and to address policy priorities and dissemination needs better, the Integrated Programme will contain a transversal programme, focusing on policy development (including data collection and analysis), language learning, new information and communication technologies (ICT), and dissemination. This will permit a more strategic and coordinated approach than in the current programmes.

The Integrated Programme will also include a new Jean Monnet programme, focusing on European integration. It will encompass the current Jean Monnet Action, to promote university teaching of and research into European integration, as well as support to important European organisations and associations in the field of education and training.

The new Tempus Plus programme will build on the successful Tempus approach, which has hitherto been limited to higher education and has led to system development and reinforced cooperation between Member States and partner countries. Tempus Plus would extend such action across the spectrum of lifelong learning: to schools, to vocational education and training, and to adult education. The programme will consist of measures to support system modernisation, to fund the mobility of individuals, and to support multilateral projects. The programme target would be:

– To support the mobility of at least 100,000 individuals by 2013.

The Commission’s detailed legislative proposal for the new programmes outlined in this Communication will be published in summer 2004, as part of a wide-rangingpackage of draft legislation for the next programming period.