In a vibrant online discussion, stakeholders from education, environment and development sectors gathered with European decision-makers to take stock of the role of education to build sustainable societies. The meeting, which was moderated by LLLP Secretary-General Giuseppina Tucci, focused on how education and lifelong learning can contribute to sustainable development not only from an economic, environment point of view but also social. Hosted by MEP Dace Melbārde, ViceChair of the CULT Committee of the European Parliament, this meeting of the Lifelong Learning Interest Group of the European Parliament saw considerable participation of stakeholders at large: civil society actors from local to EU levels, practitioners, representatives of European and international institutions.   Europe lends its ear to civil society The new European Skills Agenda sets ambitious goals for upskilling and reskilling, and it is clear that the sustainability dimension is engrained in its actions, and ways forward, said Ms Melbārde in her opening speech. At the same time, however, “innovation in education has been lagging behind” and while strategies and framework ask the right questions, their implementation often fails to provide the answer. Michael Teutsch, representative of DG EAC, pointed out the new Commission has given great emphasis on green transitions since its establishment: even the Green Deal communication makes clear reference to education and related skills development. The European Commission, especially DG EAC, wants to follow up on this by focusing on the broader role of education in the SDGs and what education can do to promote environmental sustainability.   For instance, said Ms Denise Chrcop (European Parliament Research Service) a study for the CULT Committee showed that a relevant number of projects and the budget of programmes are already addressing environmental issues but the budget allocated is still under the share of 25%. The author points out that Commission and project leaders can do more to improve awareness of environmental impact and role of participants as agents of change.   Sustainable education: what for? Tatjana Babrauskienė, Member of the EESC and trade unionist, pointed out that the Skills Agenda does not provide a target on participation in training aiming to develop green skills. The climate policy naturally impacts all sectors of learning and we cannot make progress only focusing on formal education, we must give equal importance to all sectors. To this extent, we are missing an EU-level comprehensive strategy on green skills for all ages and all learners that should be eventually translated into national strategies developed with social partners and other stakeholders. Economic, social and environmental aspects cannot be separated, which requires a great complexity of necessary skills. Of similar advice was Rilli Lappalainen, Bridge 47, who commented that the EU is inevitably seen as a trend-setter when it comes to innovation in education and pedagogies; building on previous comments, he emphasized the need to implement Target 4.7 of the SDGs, to truly fulfil the potential of what has now come in a simple wording: Education for Sustainable Development. The Envision 4.7 roadmap is an excellent starting point if we want “to jump a little higher”.   This tension between the need to have an overarching strategy at EU level and the complementary urge to start acting in local communities is at the core of what GAIA Education is doing. An education provider, as its representative May East pointed out, it proposes a “new epistemology that embraces this transformative learning and a shift from intended learning to emerging learning and understanding lifelong learning as nested with others in communities and ecosystems that empowers people”.   When we talk about Education for Sustainable Development, it’s not always clear what the aim is: are we trying to change people’s behaviour or are we trying to achieve through formal education to bring new skills for people to become scientists and innovators? Jérémy Apart, E-Graine, brought the question back to its starting point. How can we educate properly if we don’t have the overall picture of changing societies? We often focus on university science departments but when it comes to sustainable development if a school is not trying to change its practice (e.g. how often it serves meat, provision of recycling bins) then there is going to be an opposition between the lessons and what happens every day. Patterns of change are in experiential learning Interventions from the audience sparkled up the discussion. It was deemed necessary for education policy to move away from a school-based or university-based understanding: if we want to create systemic change (however large this system is), there need to be actions informed with non-formal education approaches or generally speaking with experiential learning. This is particularly true for an education that seeks to make sustainability a reality. To this extent, a lifelong learning approach is in dispensable.   In her closing remark, EAEA Secretary-General Gina Ebner pointed out that we have tools like technology, we have frameworks that we can already rely on and in Europe, we have the added value of the EU and we have education as a topic and opportunity to exchange. We see here the possibility for the future, through civil dialogue we can bring transformative change, starting from an efficient and targeted implementation.   By the same token, MEP Dace Melbārde claimed that “there is no lack of policy documents but we are lacking strategies for implementation”. In her closing remarks, she underlined that lifelong learning promotes a positive attitude towards the future.

On September 7th, and under the title “ Attention Fake! Strategies against populisms in Europe ”, experts discussed online disinformation in an event organized by the Lower Saxony State Representation. Sitting on the panel were Prof. Dr. Monika Oberle, Professor of Political Science and Political Education at the University of Göttingen, Brikena Xhomaqi, Director of the Lifelong Learning Platform and Dr. Florian Hartleb (Tallinn), consultant on digitization in Germany, lecturer and book author. The discussion was moderated by Holger Beckmann, radio correspondent at the ARD studio in Brussels. This experts’ round, the latest of a series initiated by the Lower Saxony representation , contextualises the current trends in Europe, including the strengthening of anti-European positions, the relapse into nationalist thinking and the growing demarcation or exclusion of those who think differently, foreigners and minorities. In her opening statement, Lower Saxony’s European Representative Birgit Honé professed certainty that the current influx of populist tendencies in Europe is not a natural law. Together we can put a stop to these developments, and actively help shape democracy in Europe. In addition, it will be necessary to raise everyone’s awareness of the concept of fake news and to provide suitable tools for the critical handling of news and information in general. In the discussion, Prof. Oberle also pointed out the important role of education in the context of disinformation. Those who know more about politics also have more trust. Ms. Xhomaqi concluded that: “We must use the current crisis as an opportunity to build a new Europe. A European response is needed. ”

The European Commission launched on July 1st the revised European Skills Agenda, a joint effort of DG EAC and DG EMPL with ambitious objectives for the education and training sector to be achieved by 2025. It will be completed in September with the Communication on the European Education Area. LLLP welcomes such an ambitious Agenda and its alignment with the European Pillar of Social Rights first principle on education, training and lifelong learning. This is a move in the right direction from the first Skills Agenda, released in 2016, which was heavily focused on skills development for employability. The Agenda still has a prominent focus on “skills for jobs” approach as the guiding principle for lifelong learning policies which is understandable in the current context to a certain extent. However, at LLLP we believe that a social inclusion approach should be at the forefront of these policies across the EU Read the full statement here

Why improving validation in the voluntary sector? Validation or the “validation of non-formal and informal learning” (VNFIL) is defined at EU level as the process of the identification, documentation, assessment and certification of competences. This definition has been widely shared and adopted since its mention in a Council Recommendation from 2012, which is the key policy document at EU level that recommended Member States to develop VNFIL provisions. During this last decade, EU institutions, national governments and stakeholders have worked together to put in place validation policies and strategies. As a result of this successful transnational cooperation, all EU Member States have now validation arrangements in place to diverse degrees. This allows EU citizens to make their skills visible. VNFIL is highly present in the education and training sector but it remains less developed in the labour market and in the third sector ( Study supporting the evaluation of the Council Recommendation on VNFIL , 2020, p.26). In 2018, 20 EU countries had validation arrangements in the third sector (civil society organisations, NGOs and others), where organisations hosting volunteers are largely represented. While this is encouraging, it remains insufficient and those initiatives are still very fragmented. Volunteering is a learning environment where competences, in particular, the so-called “transversal competences” (also “soft skills” or “transferable skills”) as opposed to “job-specific skills”, are developed and acquired by volunteers from all ages. Transversal competences contribute greatly to the lifelong employability and personal development of individuals. For organisations, validating the skills of volunteers help to improve the quality of their service provisions as well as recruitment and human resource management. In 2019, LLLP published a European State-of-play on validation in the voluntary sector , based on an extensive research including large scale surveys among volunteers and volunteering organisations, which highlighted the many benefits that validation brings to the voluntary sector. LLLP is therefore strongly supporting any initiatives that aim to improve validation in the voluntary sector, and to that end, our NGO has taken part in the Erasmus+ funded project “ ImproVal ”, which started in 2018. ImproVal’s goal: “let’s not reinvent the wheel”! There have been over 20 EU projects dealing with validation in volunteering and while all of them have some truly innovative dimensions, some also have similar planned activities where more synergies could be introduced. For instance, LLLP is a partner in the Job bridge project , which is a project that also covers validation in the voluntary sector, except that it has a specific focus on skills development in volunteering for the labour market. One of the activities foreseen in both Job Bridge and ImproVal was similar, it was about the launch of European surveys on validation tools. In this case, LLLP being involved in the two projects could ensure that the activities were not redundant but complementary instead, but this might not have been a possibility for other projects that were running at different timescales and involving different organisations. Peer learning and networking opportunities like the Validation Festival organised by the European Commission are great opportunities for building a European community around VNFIL, allowing practitioners to meet and exchange. However, those events are scattered in their occurrence in time and do not suffice for continuous and sustained mutual learning and synergies between initiatives. This justified even more ImproVal’s own moto, “not to reinvent the wheel” as partners were aware of the risk of duplicity between initiatives from EU funding, but also from existing initiatives at national and local levels. To that end, the project partners first worked on elaborating a list of validation tools that are known to be used in the EU. Organisations hosting volunteers can easily find on the project website the tools that are available in their language in order to get information on how it can be used in their context or get inspiration from it to develop their own without starting from scratch. Missing tools from our research can also be added in the list. The second activity of ImproVal consisted in a study on the use of those tools in which we collected answers from volunteers and organisations. The results were instructive in the sense that they give indications on what work best, especially when considering the main factors for implementing validation with volunteers: time and resources! Showcasing the importance of validation in the voluntary sector During the lifespan of the project, ImproVal partners organised four Webinars to highlight the need and relevance of validation in volunteering. The first webinar (2019), displayed examples of tools used in the voluntary sector from the Scouts, the Centre for European Volunteering, the Finnish Federation of Settlement Houses as well as the Croatian Volunteer Development Centre. You can watch it here . As the project is coming to its end, another serie of three webinars were organised by LLLP to present the results of the project as well as to invite stakeholders to discuss on the importance of valuing competences in the voluntary sector. The first two webinars took place on June 16th. In the first Webinar, volunteers and organisations hosting volunteers were invited to reflect on what they have learned through the COVID crisis; volunteers to share their story on the skills they have acquired through volunteering; and organisations on how they adapted to the challenging period. For the second Webinar, LLLP invited special guests from the EESC, and organisations involved in EU initiatives for the validation in volunteering. Among those, the projects Job Bridge and UpVal were presented. The aforementioned results from ImproVal were also presented by the project coordinator, Ok Sivis (Finland). During the third Webinar that took place on July 22nd, policy-makers and stakeholders were invited to comment on the ImproVal policy paper (see below). This was a good opportunity to discuss what can policy-makers do to improve validation in the voluntary sector. The recordings of all three Webinars and presentations can be found on this page . ImproVal is coming to an end, so what’s next? The project ImproVal is ending this year and while almost all activities have now been finalised, LLLP as well as the other partners are committed to continue advocating for more and better-quality validation in the voluntary sector. The current crisis shows the crying need for giving more value to the learning that happens in non-formal and informal learning environments as this is an inclusive and innovative solution for enhancing individuals’ personal development as much as for their integration into the labour market. The EDOS Foundation (partner in ImproVal), collaborated with LLLP for the writing of a policy paper on improving validation in the voluntary sector. We listed recommendations that policy-makers can follow to help recognising the sector’s social and economic impact in terms of learning and competences acquisition. LLLP will continue to monitor and promote the tools that are used in the voluntary sector and will follow-up with the EU institutions on the future of VNFIL in the EU. Besides, several other interesting activities are ongoing or will be launched in the coming months: Job Bridge EU Award competition (ongoing), Job Bridge final conference (early November 2020), and the preparation of a training course for volunteer facilitators (Autumn 2020). Register to our Validation mailing list for receiving occasional updates on validation! For more information on LLLP’s work in validation or on those projects, you can contact us at projects [at] lllplatform.eu

On Tuesday, July 21st, and after over four days of intense negotiations, European leaders finally reached an agreement over the next seven-year EU Budget and closely-related Recovery Fund.   To any external observer, it was clear that the EU own budget would have fallen victim to the economic needs of the Recovery Fund (called ‘Next Generation EU’), which prompted bitter disputes between Member States. The Multiannual Financial Framework for the next cycle (2021-2027) is 1.074 trillion euros, plus the extraordinary 750 billion euros that will feed the Next Generation EU: an impressive agreement per se , especially in consideration of the difficulties along the way.   In this context, the total budget for the next Erasmus+ programme is set at 21.208 billion euros , which is the same budget proposed by the Council itself in February before the COVID crisis. This amount openly defies the European Parliament’s concerns and leaves civil society’s cries unheard, including our Erasmus+ Coalition statement . Moreover, this figure represents a 5.2 billion cut (almost -20%) from the original European Commission proposal and a staggering 23.8 billion cut (-53%) from what the European Parliament deemed necessary .   Other programmes that transversally touch upon education and training such as Horizon+ (80.9 billion euros, with a total reduction of 13.5 billion euros from previous Commission’s proposals ) and Justice, Rights and Values (841 million euros, against the 1.83 billion euros demanded by CSOs and the European Parliament ) have suffered cuts in funding. Overall, it is surprising to realise that cuts mostly affect the Heading 7 of the budget, ‘Investing in People, Social Cohesion and Values’: this alone says a lot about the European Council’s priorities. Addressing the unprecedented consequences of the health crisis in education and training requires serious investments and political commitment. In this very particular moment, Europe cannot afford to leave behind vulnerable learners by failing to adequately inject much-needed investments into the social sphere. While the Next Generation EU rightfully focuses on the immediate recovery of the economy, European leaders do not seem to share the view that a democratic, sustainable and socially cohesive Union, in the long-term, cannot be built on industry and infrastructure alone but shall rise from values, solidarity and competences of its people. Ensuring employment and economic prosperity will not be enough to overcome the consequences of an ongoing traumatic experience for all citizens : this is a short-sighted action. Furthermore, the agreed budget falls short on Europe’s own ambitions. We can’t help but notice a profound disconnection between political declarations to invest in education, training, research and youth, and the outcomes of decision-making processes. President von der Leyen herself, at the beginning of her mandate, claimed to support the tripling of the Erasmus+ budget ; instead, for the next cycle, the Erasmus+ will see a mere +50% increase over the 2014-2020 budget. We regret to acknowledge that European leaders overlooked a great opportunity for upscaling education and training transversally in Europe. This envelope is not enough to deliver on the ambitious (and much-needed) goals of the future programme for learning mobility, cooperation between organisations and support for policy reform across all sectors, not to mention its sought contribution to implementing the European Education Area, EU Youth Strategy and the European Green Deal, among other priorities.   Make no mistakes: this agreement is a shaky message to European citizens and an earthquake to European ambitions in education and training and other sectors alike.

The Erasmus+ project ‘Devisus’ is short for “Development of an Ecosystem for Valuing Social Impact and Social Utility”. By exchanging practices, knowledge, experiences, skills and resources, Devisus created a common ground to evaluate social impact and social utility in the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE). In striving to construct a shared vision to the question of social scope evaluation, the project sheds light onto, and promotes the values of the social economy organisations and enterprises; and those working in the field. For many years now, the issue of social impact and utility assessment has been a key issue in the social economy. However, despite the emergence of projects and experiments on the subject, there is no real shared vision at the European level (beyond the more classic and quantified vision of impact assessment). Seven organisations, most of them members of RIPESS Europe (European network of solidarity economy), have decided to work on the co-construction of a shared vision on impact measurement, by pooling their experiences and lessons learned. This is how the DEVISUS project “Development of an Ecosystem for Valuing Social Impact and Social Utility” was born. The project is financed under the ERASMUS+ programme “Adult Education Small-scale Partnerships”. Through the exchanges of practices, knowledge, experiences, skills and resources, the project aimed to: build a shared culture between partners, in order to develop benchmarks and guidelines that can be disseminated throughout Europe improve the skills of coaches, teachers and trainers working in the field of SSE strengthen alliances within SSE between different networks to promote the expertise of SSE networks on the issue of social impact and utility. This collaborative work allowed, at the end of the project, to prefigure a follow-up project, on the elaboration and dissemination of training courses on social impact and utility assessment across Europe. Project planning The project ran from April 2022 to September 2023, and is built on 5 axes, leading to 5 meeting times between partners: April 2022 in Paris: overall organisation of the consortium and definition of the overall schedule, deliverables. September 2022 in Lille: work on a shared culture, sharing of experiences of the different partners, interventions of researchers. October 2022 in Rome: work on the skills and know-how needed to support organisations in their social impact assessment. February 2023 in Namur: development of a training framework for social impact coaches. June 2023 in Brussels: dissemination of results and closure of the project. This project gathers 7 partners: MES-Mouvement pour l’économie solidaire, lead coordinator [FR] MES Occitanie – Mouvement pour l’économie solidaire Occitanie [FR] Apes-Acteurs pour une économie solidaire [FR] RIES-Rete Italiana per l’Economia Solidale [IT] UNIPSO [BE] Concertes [BE] RIPESS Europe [EU] And 2 supporting organisations: Initiatives Europe Conseil, to accompany the monitoring of the project and the overall evaluation process [EU] Lifelong Learning Platform, to support the dissemination of project products, deliverables, results [EU].

Today the European Commission has unveiled its initiative: a European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience . It sets ambitious, quantitative objectives for upskilling (improving existing skills) and reskilling (training in new skills) to be achieved within the next 5 years. The Agenda is built around the five areas and twelve different actions that come together in what is supposed to update the 2016 Skills Agenda . Among the 12 actions, we find new initiatives such as Action 8 (Skills for life) that LLLP has called for in 2016. Additionally a few promising actions such as Action 9 ( Creating Individual Learning Accounts ) that are likely to boost professional training but most importantly to introduce universal training entitlements. The action 10 ( A European approach to Micro-Credentials ) is another novelty for European education and training offer but yet to be developed and defined. LLLP is part of the Consultation Expert Group set by the Commissioner in March this year. The Action 11 ( the Europass platform ) revision of the existing Europass platform it’s the result of 2-year hard work to improve learning and work mobility in Europe which LLLP has been proudly part of. This update is an ambitious and comprehensive effort, that mobilises most sectors of our society in a common aim to modernise Europe towards a sustainable and resilient future. The Lifelong Learning Platform welcomes this far-reaching plan, as a beneficial update of the 2016 Skills Agenda . It is commendable that its primary objective is “ to ensure the right to training and lifelong learning “, as we believe that this is precisely the direction that Europe should be heading to. Its goal to lay the foundation for green and digital transition is a particularly positive angle, as it addresses contemporary societal challenges from the education and training standpoint . The updated New European Skills Agenda has seized the opportunity to finally revive vocational education and training (VET) as the key element of lifelong learning systems . We are glad to acknowledge that the Commission is promoting VET as a rightful first-choice path, and that permeability between education, lifelong learning and VET sectors is duly emphasised: it is only through such a holistic approach that we will be able to overcome today’s unprecedented challenges. The same goes for Life Skills, a topic that LLLP had addressed in the recent past. The specific action on Life Skills tackles financial, health, and environmental literacy: while the effort to link them to sustainability is undeniably good news (as we have been asking), the accent on Life Skills should be stronger and most of all transversal to all sectors of learning. Many of the Skills Agenda new elements revolve around its targets for education , to be achieved by 2025. The choice of these key targets highlights a renewed attention to vulnerable groups and testifies of a massive effort in collecting, monitoring and reporting data. But this raises a number of questions. LLLP urges policy-makers that citizens, learners, educators, educational institutions and other stakeholders have a say in the implementation and the evaluation of the Agenda. It is not clear how relevant stakeholders will access the funding available, nor is their involvement in the decisions regarding the European Skills Agenda. LLLP wishes to warn against the danger of a top-down approach , as the education sector itself is loosely involved in the definition of the targets. Another important concerning element of ambitious policy reforms is the continuation of existing policies and evaluation of their implementation . Not to mention the link between different policies to ensure coherence that we hope the further development of the European Education Area will address. By the same token, we regret that the definition of lifelong learning rests on a narrow point of view: its function is not solely related to upskilling and reskilling processes, and it certainly cannot be reduced to a skills-for-jobs approach. Lifelong learning englobes and encompasses these concepts, with its guiding principles being ‘ inclusion ‘ and learning opportunities. Building on this, lifelong learning cannot remain confined to work environments, however important, but should be embedded in every citizen’s mindset since the earliest stages of their lives. The Skills Agenda truly has the potential to equip current and future generations with the necessary skills to face today’s many challenges. It made big steps towards an increased role of education and training in our world, but more cross-sector cooperation is needed to ensure that we make the final leap .

The European Commission’s revised proposal for the next long-term EU budget (2021-2027) brings both hope and disappointment. The strong commitment to European cooperation and public investment demonstrated by its proposed allocation of 1.1 trillion euros, along with 750 billion euros for recovery instrument NextGenerationEU, is a positive sign for the future of Europe. Addressing the social and economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, as well as the green and digital transitions, certainly requires ambitious public investment. In this regard, Europe cannot afford to leave people behind by failing to adequately channel such investment into funding programmes which have a tangible and positive impact on their lives while also helping to tackle the above challenges and contribute to the EU’s recovery. However, compared to the Commission’s original proposal from 2018, the revision surprisingly reduces the allocation to such programmes. Read the full statement here

On June 22-23, IN-QUAL partners met online to wrap up the socially-distanced work of the past few months and make plans for the last phase of the project. IN-QUAL project aims to support entrepreneurship education providers in the implementation of quality assurance systems and to promote a EU-wide culture of quality inspired by EQAVET standards. Over the last few months since our meeting in November 2019, we have been hard at work on the development, revision and finalization of the contents of an online training course for Quality Managers , which will soon become available on our website. The training course is composed of 5 Modules structured around the 4 phases of the quality improvement cycle (PDCA cycle): Introduction Planning Implementation Check Review The 5 Modules comprise a total of 28 Action Cards , short learning blocks designed to be easily implemented in a VET/EE institution to improve its quality management system. While the online platform receives its finishing touches, the partnership is looking for VET/EE providers interested in testing the online course ! If you are a Quality Manager in Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands or Portugal and are interested in this opportunity, learn more here and get in touch with us ! After selecting 30 Quality Managers, we will officially launch the testing phase starting in September 2020, followed by a final review of our online material and a set of final recommendations for entrepreneurship education providers and policy-makers. COVID-19 has kept us apart but we are looking forward to these last few months of work with positive spirits and an even stronger desire for collaboration.

The Lifelong Learning Platform is delighted to announce that it will be holding its 2020 General Assembly on 25 September . The GA will be held in an online format due to the restrictions on meetings and travels, and will see the participation of the whole membership. Members will gather to discuss the general direction of the LLLP, and will also proceed to the election of four new Steering Committee members . The rotation system has it that three members of the Steering Committee will end their mandate this year, and two more resigned in the last year; the General Assembly will thus be tasked with electing these new representatives, a stated in our statutes and internal rules. Members of the LLLPlatform are currently presenting their applications, with a deadline on 4 September. The General Assembly will also elect a new President for LLLP, as Luis Costa’s mandate is coming to an end. As our statutes and internal rules state, the new President shall be elected between the Steering Committee members whose mandate has been lasting for at least one year. During the General Assembly members will be discussing the next cycle of the Erasmus+ programme as well as the LLLP positions on Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Societies and the role of education in active citizenship. The E&T post-2020 policy developments will be part of the discussions too. Two Working Groups will also take place. The General Assembly will also be an occasion to vote on and welcome new members in the LLLP family. The LLLPlatform also invites interested organisations to come forward and apply as members of the Platform. If you are interested to become a member of the LLLP and would like to learn more about the procedures and added value, find more info here . Deadline for applications is 25 August 2019. Please get in touch with the LLLPlatform for any other matter.

The Lifelong Learning Platform is delighted to announce that it will be holding its 2020 General Assembly on 25 September . The GA will be held in an online format due to the restrictions on meetings and travels, and will see the participation of the whole membership. Members will gather to discuss the general direction of the LLLP, and will also proceed to the election of four new Steering Committee members . The rotation system has it that three members of the Steering Committee will end their mandate this year, and two more resigned in the last year; the General Assembly will thus be tasked with electing these new representatives, a stated in our statutes and internal rules. Members of the LLLPlatform are currently presenting their applications, with a deadline on 4 September. The General Assembly will also elect a new President for LLLP, as Luis Costa’s mandate is coming to an end. As our statutes and internal rules state, the new President shall be elected between the Steering Committee members whose mandate has been lasting for at least one year. During the General Assembly members will be discussing the next cycle of the Erasmus+ programme as well as the LLLP positions on Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Societies and the role of education in active citizenship. The E&T post-2020 policy developments will be part of the discussions too. Two Working Groups will also take place. The General Assembly will also be an occasion to vote on and welcome new members in the LLLP family. The LLLPlatform also invites interested organisations to come forward and apply as members of the Platform. If you are interested to become a member of the LLLP and would like to learn more about the procedures and added value, find more info here . Deadline for applications is 25 August 2019. Please get in touch with the LLLPlatform for any other matter.

On 27 May, the European Commission published its revised proposal for the EU Multiannual Financial Framework (2021-2027) along with the new financial instrument Next Generation EU aimed at helping EU Member States recover from the crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Together these amount to a total of 1.85 trillion euros for the next seven-year period.   We welcome this ambitious financial package as a clear demonstration of the added value that European cooperation brings in such challenging times. Nevertheless, while increases to many funding programmes including Erasmus+ compared to the current MFF are a welcome development, we are concerned that the key role of education, training and lifelong learning in the recovery and overall future of Europe have not been recognised. Indeed, the proposed budget for Erasmus+, which at 24.6 billion euros in 2018 prices amounts to less than the doubling put forward that year, falls short of the ambition expressed by the European Parliament and Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen herself. As drivers of social cohesion, economic prosperity and innovation, education, training and lifelong learning remain vital for the personal and professional development of all people across Europe, as well as their well-being. They are key for empowering citizens in their daily lives. Hence, we stress that they should be a cross-cutting priority across the next generation of EU funding programmes. Erasmus+, for instance, has repeatedly proven its immense value in promoting skills development across various fields, fostering a sense of European belonging and solidarity and supporting cross-border cooperation among learners, educators, civil society organisations and policymakers. In light of the far-reaching impact of the pandemic on our education and training systems, including the investment gap in digital solutions that it has brought to light, we need this now more than ever.   Synergies between the future Erasmus+ and other programmes touching on social welfare, skills and employment (European Social Fund Plus, 86 billion euros), digitalisation (Digital Europe, 8.2 billion euros), social infrastructure (InvestEU, 31.6 billion euros) and research and innovation (Horizon Europe, 94.4 billion euros) also have vast potential for supporting Europe’s path to recovery. After all, education, training and lifelong learning are not just means to an end, or for meeting short-term demands on the labour market, but serve as a vehicle for promoting creativity, adaptability, entrepreneurial spirit and innovative solutions. These will all be crucial in dealing with Europe’s common challenges in the months and years to come.   We call on the Member States to back an ambitious budget for education, training and lifelong learning – in all their shapes and forms – in the next MFF and as part of the EU recovery plan. As we navigate our way out of this crisis, they will be fundamental for empowering people, supporting their well-being and active participation in society, and ensuring our readiness to solve the challenges that lie ahead. ——————————— The Lifelong Learning Platform (European Civil Society for Education) is an umbrella that gathers more than 40 European organisations active in the field of education, training and youth. Currently these networks represent more than 50 000 educational institutions and associations covering all sectors of formal, non-formal and informal learning. Their members reach out to several millions of beneficiaries. Contact: policy@lllplatform.eu – Rue de l’Industrie, 10 – 1000 Bruxelles – 02 893 25 15