Éducation et formation : les apports de l’Union européenne
In this trilogy, Renaud Denuit takes us on a journey into the very bowels of the European institutions and the meanderings of its procedures, in pursuit of a subject – education and training – that has had far less media attention than many others, related protests and strikes notwithstanding. A very important subject all the same, as it is the key to personal fulfilment and the basis of creativity and innovation. Because education and training do just as much to support the socialisation of individuals as they do to offer them prospects of employment. And finally, because they contribute, or should contribute, to the formation of the European demos. These many different angles were not something that could fail to pique the interest of the author, himself educated to PhD level and the wearer of many different hats – novelist, lead writer for our Bulletin quotidien Europe and former European civil servant – and will inspire many to embark on this odyssey of education in three volumes.
The odyssey begins by going back to the start, with a fascinating summary of the history of education and training in Europe, which has the merit of stressing the importance of exchanges and the circulation of people, ideas and practices, not leaving out the importance of the Church, before departing into the uncertain waters of European integration. He starts at the very beginning as this monograph, despite its thematic aspects necessitating leaps through time, is essentially chronological in nature. He picks up the story with the Council of Europe, which has been a true centre for exchanging experiences and forging ideas, even though the nature of its institutions has never allowed it to generate truly specific and measurable results. Those it has produced, however, include the creation of the European schools, the College of Europe in Bruges and increasing interest in vocational education, during the gestation period of the first Communities. Then, the rise in relevance of this social dimension of training in the 1970s and the success of creation of the European University Institute of Florence in 1972 and of CEDEFOP in the middle of the same decade.
“Although the European schools and the Florence Institute were created outside the Community framework, the credit they enjoy, the European dimension of their remits and activities as well as the ideals they represent benefited Community Europe from its inception (…). From the time of the first Communities, European education in all its aspects was set in place, covering all levels of education, primary to university, including doctorate level”, the author stresses, not shying away from the fact that the beneficiaries were “very low in number and from privileged backgrounds” (our translation throughout). But education and training were late in making their breakthrough into the European domain, because of the limitations of the early treaties and the reluctance of the member states and regions, most notably the German Länder, to give up their jealously guarded competences.
It was not until 10 December 1975 that a configuration of the Council bringing together the education ministers was born. It would take nearly 20 years more for a Community competence to be recognised by the Treaty of Maastricht. Although programmes have increased in number, diversified and aggregated over the years, including the flagship Erasmus, progress has by no means been linear and subjects that would appear to be simple and logical have advanced at a snail’s pace, such as the recognition of diplomas, which “is still not complete”, as Renaud points out.
The second volume of the triptyque starts with a fascinating chapter on the role and case-law of the European Court of Justice, with a long series of rulings stretching out from 1974 to 2022, of “striking” richness. This case-law “supported the effectiveness of the principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of nationality, encouraged the free movement of students, clarified whether and under what conditions education constituted a service within the meaning of the Treaty and what universities could provide vocational training in”, the author explains.
“A permanent dialectic between the Community and the inter-governmental level overarches the entire history of European integration, right to this day (…). The tension between the national governments, which are wedded to the sovereignty of their respective States (or, to be more precise, what remains of it: Ed), and the principal purely Community institutions (European Parliament, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the EU) is openly revealed, on all matters including budget, taxation, social or climate policy, migration issues, defence or relations with third countries. And this of course also applies to education”, Renaud points out.
In the late 1990s, the member states would take back much of their control, thereby marginalising a Commission still licking its wounds from the crisis forcing it to resign en masse in 1999 and sidelining the European Parliament, by launching the Lisbon strategy and the Bologna process, with the aim of bringing the higher education systems closer together. They applied an “open method of coordination” that would end up generating little besides vast amounts of paper. Although the stated aim of the Lisbon strategy of “preparing the transition to a knowledge-based society and economy” was in itself most laudable, none of the objectives set were reached by the 2010 deadline. As for the Bologna process, “it did not contribute much” other than popularising the model of higher education focusing on three subjects, the author stresses.
Before this long intergovernmental hiatus, the Delors Commission had launched a “general offensive in the fields of education, training, culture and audiovisual, as well as in favour of multilingualism and youth” in the mid-1980s, Renaud reminds us. And it was in this framework that ERASMUS, also known as the “European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students” would, in December 1985, bring “Erasmus himself, a free and fecund spirit, into the somewhat grey and decidedly technical history of the European Economic Community”, albeit at the cost of numerous legal battles and with many twists in the tale. This debut went almost unnoticed, with barely 3,244 grants awarded in the first academic year (1987-1988), but these numbers swelled rapidly: 51,694 beneficiaries in 1992; 111,082 in the year 2000; 154,553 in 2005/2006… By 2023, more than 12.5 million people had enjoyed the benefits of this programme since its inception, in its original form and that of its successors, Erasmus Mundus and Erasmus +. Furthermore, the programme’s budget has consistently increased, to reach the level of 26.2 billion euros over the period 2021-2027. This amount is, admittedly, a long way below the 46.7 billion called for by the European Parliament, but which, thanks to its support, has ended up not far off the figure of 30 billion put forward by the Commission during the negotiations for the multi-annual financial framework with the member states.
“Erasmus was and still is the only programme of the European Union that has had a feature-length film aimed at a general audience made about it”, with Cédric Klapisch’s The Spanish Apartment, which came out in 2002 and sold five million tickets throughout Europe. The success of this programme would even pave the way for exaggeration when, in 2014, Commission communicants proclaimed that an estimated one million babies were believed to have been born to Erasmus couples since 1987. “The institution with a reputation for being formal to the point of froideur relying on arguments of love and sexual union to promote its product was not something you see every day”, the author comments, adding “the method used to calculate its ‘estimate’ was quickly called into question. It never attempted to use that kind of tone again”.
All the same, “the Erasmus programme is unquestionably a jewel in the European Union’s crown, which gained prestige among young people, universities, then trainers, apprentices and anybody engaged in learning”. It is also a programme that has allowed the EU to “position itself on the international stage, not just because it is the world’s largest exchange programme, but also because an increasing number of third-country nationals have been able to benefit from it”, Renaud Denuit observes. His critical spirit is, however, not long absent: “the percentage of mobile students is still marginal at European level. The path through bureaucratic circuitry (not necessarily at EU level, but also in the member states and the universities) can still be a deterrent at times (…). Given the cost of living locally and travel, the system automatically favours students from wealthier backgrounds, even though the grants are based on the family’s income. What was the case in 1987 is still the case today: EU students are not all equal for the purposes of Erasmus, as every placement carries a cost for the family budget. Students do their Erasmus year with no public assistance as their parents can afford it; it is misleading to count them in the statistics alongside the Erasmus grant beneficiaries”, he writes.
Although he devotes many pages to this key programme, Renaud also lists the very many programmes that have followed on over the years. Particularly worthy of note are the two initiatives taken by the Juncker Commission from 2016, to subsidise volunteering schemes with the European Solidarity Corps and, in 2018, the distribution of the Pass Interrail as part of DiscoverEU.
At the end of this journey, the author acknowledges that although “we should obviously not harmonise everything (…), we could at least, in line with the values of the EU, make European children a little more equal, for instance by setting a common age for them to begin compulsory schooling, or even a common age to start pre-school for early years”. “As the teaching of the history and functioning of the European Union do not continue in the secondary education cycle, it should be compulsory; it is a fundamental matter for the future”, Renaud rightly stresses. But why on earth should we go no further than just teaching EU history? The European element of the teaching of history is vital. In all centuries and at every latitude, history has been manipulated to unite or to divide. It needs to be spared the interference of politics and taught on an objective basis, with the perspective of openness to European and universal history. A pilot project carried out within the Council of Europe nearly forty years ago arranged twinning schemes between two primary school classes from different countries, leaving the teachers and children a great deal of freedom in their choice of subject (local, family, national or thematic history) and how it is dealt with. All of this has resulted in highly useful exchanges that could serve as inspiration.
“Something could be done in the field of quality standards, both in higher education and vocational or continuing training”, the author argues, adding that “as regards education in media, digital education, language and certainly climate education, it would be useful to legislate, in view of the importance of these major issues (…). None of this will be possible without treaty change (TEU and TFEU), which is currently being militated for by the European Parliament, not by the governments”. And while it is “very interesting to observe that the question of the purposes of education and its content are now appearing on the European scene, particularly on the occasion of the definition of specific targets and the role and development of universities”, readers cannot help but join Renaud in deploring the fact that “these objectives [are] conceived more in the framework of a broader objective of ‘international competitiveness’ and adaptation to market needs than in a ‘humanist’ perspective, aiming to improve the well-being of people and to invent a fair society, even though this is what characterises the great European educational tradition”.
Concludes by stressing that “we must want school to succeed. It is Europe’s treasure. All this sound and fury about homeschooling (other than where absolutely necessary) puts us back centuries, to the era of governesses and tutors for the wealthy; it would be disastrous for social equality. School for all is these days shot through with ideological and racist tension. The profession of teacher has become dangerous. In France, two teachers, Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, were shot dead, the victims of Islamist terrorism. They are martyrs to public education and the freedom of thought. In the name of this freedom and in the name of knowledge, in the name of protecting children and teachers, we must make school a sanctuary and ensure that it is respected. Far from being a local matter, it must be the priority duty of all Europeans”.
The series also includes sections on institutional evolutions over the course of the successive treaties, the extreme diversity of education systems and languages and their use in the institutions. Finally, Renaud Denuit has appended an impressive bibliography for the benefit of researchers. (Olivier Jehin)
Renaud Denuit. Éducation et formation: les apports de l’Union européenne. 3 volumes (all available in French only)
Le professeur entre en Europe. L’harmattan. ISBN: 978-2-3664-4202-0. 229 pages. €25,00
La complexité politique des apprentissages européens. L’harmattan. ISBN: 978-2-3364-4561-8. 217 pages. €24,00
L’empire fragile des savoirs bénéfiques. L’harmattan. ISBN: 978-2-3364-4564-9. 289 pages. €30,00