As part of its efforts to galvanise the Single Market, the European Commission has recently launched a “mutual evaluation” exercise where member states will be asked to supply details of which professions they regulate and how. The Commission will then produce a comprehensive map, designed to guide peer review.
At issue are the number of regulated professions and the manner in which they are regulated. The Commission has no exact figure – it typically speaks of 4 000+. Professions are regulated in widely differing ways in different countries. Only the seven “sectoral” professions (medical doctor, dentist, general care nurse, midwife, veterinary surgeon, pharmacist and architect) are regulated at EU/EEA level.
The aims of the mutual evaluation are to rationalise regulatory activities, to ease access to the professions as far as consumer protection permits, and to extend the scope of automatic professional recognition. For more information, see http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52013DC0676:EN:NOT. More...

On 13 December, the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA), together with EUA, the European Association for International Education (EAIE) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) will organise the one-day Policy seminar in Brussels entitled “For mutual gain: Euro-African cooperation in higher education”.
The event will cover a number of issues such as:

•    recent overall trends and developments in African higher education;
•    internationalisation in African higher education; and
•    cooperation in higher education between Africa and Europe.

Speakers will include specialists on African higher education and on Euro-Africa collaboration, including HE representatives from Africa and Europe and from organisations such as the World Bank and the European Commission.
More information on the event and registration is available through the ACA website and EUA members benefit from the same reduced fee as ACA members.

On the 4 October 2013, Education International (EI) launched a year of action, an initiative for quality education around the world that will culminate on a World Day of Action in October 2014. EI and ETUCE invite everybody who cares about the education of our children to join forces with us in our call for a ‘Better Quality Education for a Better World’.

On 2 October was launched a Commission’s Communication on “Strengthening the social dimension of the economic and monetary union” focused on reinforcing policy coordination under the European Semester and social dialogue, as well as enhancing solidarity and job mobility. The document proposes to establish a new scoreboard of indicators to better identify major employment and social challenges; among those are the NEET (not in education, employment or training) rate and youth (18-24) unemployment rate, that would contribute to measure for instance skills relevance or performance of education and labour market institutions. According to the latest EU Employment and Social Situation Quarterly review (June 2013), 13,2% of young people fell in the NEET category in the fourth quarter of 2012. The scoreboard should be functional for the 2014 European Semester, feeding in the spring European Council and the preparation of Country-Specific Recommendations (see MEMO). See also SOLIDAR Conference on Decent Work and Quality Employment for NEETs on 15 October at the Parliament.

Eurydice has recently published their annually updated reports on Teachers’ and School Head’s Salaries and Allowances and National Student Fee and Support Systems 2012/13 in Europe. Reports show, among other findings, that the teaching profession remains poorly remunerated, and that in Europe England charges the highest amount of student fees, while a number of countries – mainly Nordic – apply a ‘no fee’ regime for all students.

EUCIS-LLL organises its 3rd Lifelong Learning Week in the European Parliament, Brussels, from 2 to 6 December 2013. This year, the Week will have a particular focus on the upcoming European Elections of Spring 2014. At this occasion EUCIS-LLL will launch its Manifesto for the European elections and more than 10 civil society events (see the calendar) will take place in order to provide ideas on how to modernise education and training systems in Europe. You can already register to the EUCIS-LLL Roundtable on our Manifesto “Buidling together the future of learning” (3 December 9h30-12h45) as well as our seminar “Making the case for European civic education” (4 December 9h-12h) jointly organised witht the European Civic Forum and our international conference on “Measuring progress in lifelong learning” (5 December 9h-13h).

This briefing note (available in several EU languages) provides a short analysis on how to help low-qualified adults out of unemployment, with special focus on the possibilities of work-based learning.