The History of EU Cooperation in the Field of Education and Training: how lifelong learning became a strategic objective

In 2007, the EU is celebrating both the 50th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome and the 20 years of existence of its flagship programme, Erasmus, thus recalling that the EU is more than its economic, agricultural or monetary policies and that it develops also as a community of peoples. Education has a key role to play in this respect. This article provides an insight into how community cooperation in the field of education developed since its inception at the beginning of the 70s. It analyses more specifically how this cooperation and the one in the field of training evolved over the years, first in parallel and then in a more integrated manner, in particular from the 90s onwards, to form what is now a common platform to support lifelong leaning and the 2010 goals set by the Lisbon Strategy.