Vocational education in the European Union

Abstract

Vocational education is a key element of the realization of the Lisbon strategy’s goals in the European Union. The article deals with the increasing importance of the vocational education in the recent period. The author describes how the legal framework of the cooperation between the national governments and the European authorities has been developed in the history of the EU. It has been analyzed the present situation based on the data sources published by the working document of the European Commission in 2008 about “Education and Training 2010”. The results of the investigations suggest that the educational and training policy of the European countries makes an important contribution to the competitiveness of the European economy. The backwardness of the South and Eastern European countries compared with the developed Western European countries in the field of education is not so significant and depends not only on financial resources. The realization of the desired aims in education and training by 2010 will be achieved rather by the mobilization of educational traditions and by strengthening of openness against social changes.