Brussels, 03/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - On 8 September, the information network on education in Europe (EURYDICE) will be publishing its third report in a series of four reports on the teaching profession in Europe. Entitled: "Eurydice: working conditions and pay of teachers in Europe", the report will be financed by the European Commission. It covers 30 countries. The main conclusions of the report are: 1) gross basic salaries of teachers starting out in the profession are often below or equivalent to the GDP per capita. They exceed this by 50% at the end of the career in most countries of the EU. The least favourable situations are to be found in the candidate countries and in several northern countries. Exceptions are Spain, Greece and Portugal, where basic salaries at the end of a career amount to over 200% of GDP per capita; 2) half of the European countries consider continuous learning is a vocational obligation, while others link all promotion to pursuit of continuous training; 3) formal support mechanisms set in place to help teachers in difficulty - whether for problems of a personal kind, difficulties linked to the teaching activity or relational conflicts - are still not very widespread; 4) the definition of the working hours of teachers is no longer limited to the number of hours spent teaching but comes increasingly close to the general definition of working hours including the number of overall working hours and/or the compulsory amount of time in school. (The report will be available from 8 September at: http: //http://www.eurydice.org/Documents/KeyTopics3/en/FrameSet3.htm ).