The Swedish Presidency has recently presented its priorities to the newly elected Culture and Education Committee of the European Parliament. The Committee met for the first time in Brussels on 2-3 September.
The Presidency sent three distinct ministers to talk with the Committee: Jan Björklund (Minister for Education), Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth (Minister for Culture) and Nyamko Sabuni (Minister for Integration and Gender Equality).
One of the key issues the Presidency wants to focus on is the future of the Lifelong Learning Programme, Jan Björklund said.
During their speeches the Ministers outlined the major importance of high standards of education and research, good opportunities for creativity and innovation and better living conditions for young people to encourage a dynamic individual development and sustainable development and growth in the EU.
Sweden has therefore taken the youth field as a main objective. The Swedish education minister said its Presidency would focus its effort on:
- further intensive development of European cooperation in education,
- improving cooperation between education, research and innovation,
- drawing attention to the conditions for migrants to succeed in society through a decent education, with an emphasis on the importance of multilingualism,
- encouraging and supporting children’s and young people’s access to culture and media and their opportunities to develop their own creativity,
- an agreement on the direction of future European cooperation in the area of youth for 2010-2018.
A decision on this should be taken by EU Youth Ministers at the Council meeting in Brussels on 26–27 November 2009.
He also introduced his programme on education to the MEPs and explained that in May this year, under the Czech Presidency, objectives and priorities for a strategic framework for cooperation in education were set for the work to be undertaken over the coming decade. The Swedish Presidency has taken three of the priorities in this framework as its starting point.
First priority is the professional development of teachers and the role of school management; secondly migration and education and third the ‘knowledge triangle’ – that is, the interaction between education, research and innovation. As to migration and education, the Minister mentioned multilingualism as a cornerstone to strengthen this link.
These issues will be discussed at an informal meeting of the education ministers in Göteborg on 23 and 24 September 2009.