EU Council: Last updates of the year

With the approaching of the end of the year, time has come to sum up where we stand with Education policies of the EU and its member states. The last Council meetings of the year synthetised some of the recent developments.
First, let us start with the financial concerns. On 9 December, EU finance ministers expressed broad support to the  new EUR 315 billion Investment Plan, presented on 26 November by the European Commission and aimed at getting “Europe growing again and get more people back to work”. According to the guidelines, this additional investment will target, among others, also education, research and innovation. The Commission is expected to submit a legislative proposal in January 2015 and the aim is to have it adopted by June 2015. In addition, European Parliament and Council’s negotiators reached a compromise on the EU budget, which could affect the level of education and research funding for the next year (see ACA Newsletter 'Education Europe', Edition November 2014). The deal includes extra payment appropriations of some EUR 3.5 billion for the 2014 budget while 2015 payment appropriations are set at EUR 141.21 billion, an amount closer to the Commission’s initial proposal than to the Council’s position. More...