Solidarity has become a question of survival for the European Union (EU) as it recovers from a decade of crises, only to start the new decade amid a global pandemic. Global and European challenges, alongside a rise in populism, have left the establishment of strong EU solidarity struggling, despite initiatives from within the EU calling to connect with citizens to strengthen the community. The need to bolster the European project with deep-rooted solidarity is not a new concept of our times. It was in fact highlighted as early as the 1948 Congress of Europe in The Hague as a fundamental necessity for the projectās success. The subsequent European Cultural Conference of 1949 proposed education as a means to diffuse the notion of a united Europe. This book tells that story of the European Movementās mission to create through education a European spirit to secure the success of European integration, and how much of that mission reflected in the Europe of today.
In tracing the development of an EU education policy, which never managed to be established as a fully fledged area of European competence, the book draws links between the crisis of solidarity experienced by the EU today and the difficulties faced throughout European integration to foster spirit through education. European symbols have been created, including a European flag, a European patrimony of historic towns and sites, and a Europe Day, but has it been enough to foster a European spirit and solidarity? Economic, financial, military, demographic and environmental crises at global level have put European solidarity to the test and have the capacity to strengthen the European Union or shatter it. Was a European spirit created and lost or did it ever really exist at all? What role did education play in fostering spirit, to what extent did it succeed and what were the obstacles in relying on education? The book makes the case that education has not been a stable mechanism for fostering spirit due to its national attachment to identity and nation-building. However, without education, it has been a challenge to foster the spirit needed to establish a strong sense of European solidarity to overcome the crises the EU faces today.
The bookās primary objective is to explore the linkage between education and European solidarity to suggest that todayās crisis of solidarity in the EU can be connected to the development of (or lack thereof) an education policy at European level. Specifically, it analyses the role assigned to education (secondary, further and higher education, as well as adult and vocational education) in early discussions on European integration to foster the European spirit needed to create a cohesive union of states with a common outlook and mission. It goes on to draw on the current political landscape to highlight the consequences of weak or non-existent European spiritāwhat the European founders had feared. At the same time, rather than concluding that education should be dismissed as a means to foster solidarity, the book looks ahead to propose how, through lessons learnt, the EU can navigate education policy in such a way that it still has an important role to play in the processes of civic participation and solidarity-building.
The pursuit of this argument follows two theoretical and analytical routes, structured in the book in three parts and outlined in this introductory chapter. The first part of the book, Education in the European Union, is dedicated to the origins and evolution of education as an area of European Community policy. To trace competence expansion and analyse the nature of its development, the study is framed within the debate between the opposing integration theories of neofunctionalism (policy development is automatic and is facilitated by the concept of spillover) and intergovernmentalism (member states play a central role in the policy-development process which is therefore driven by converging national interests). The part concludes by illuminating the notion that education has developed according toāand continues to develop along the lines ofāintergovernmentalism due to its close attachment to national-identity formation, nation-building and national solidarity.
The bookās second part focuses on the notion of solidarity between theory and practice, while the final part, The entwinement of education and solidarity in the European Union, unpacks the challenges and possibilities for fostering European spirit and solidarity through education, as advocated by the European Movement, triangulating the theoretical concepts of Durkheim to understand solidarity, Hegel for input on how individuals relate to their society, and Habermas on citizensā participation in the public sphere and the role of learning processes. It elaborates this linkage between education and nation-building to seek answers to what it implies for the EU today in the face of the crises, when a demand for European solidarity is in short supply.
Exploring through the notion of spirit the intertwine between education and solidarity, the book presents an interdisciplinary study that avoids the compartmentalisation of education studies, philosophy and political science to bring ideas together that shed fresh light on contemporary debates currently under the spotlight. The study does not limit its appeal and benefit to educationalists, but also opens up the field of education to a wider audience in European policymaking, with attention made to attracting practitioners looking beyond the confines of their policy area to understand how education might impact hot policy topics, as well as to academics seeking to make more sense of educationās scope across European studies.
Structure of the Book
The first of the content chapters Education and the European āIdeaā (1945ā1956) addresses the initial concrete steps towards constructing Europe and the already embedded role of education in this process. Discussions on the uniting of Europe took place in the framework of the pressure group the European Movement and specifically at the Congress of Europe in The Hague in 1948. In addition to the political specificities of bringing the nations of Europe closer together, representatives proposed the cultural unification of Europe, stating that if the European project were to succeed, it could not just be a political union, it had to exist in the hearts of its citizens. A European spirit was a fundamental component. The congress considered education to be a mechanism for fostering European spirit and put forward a series of initiatives for the implementation of this mission. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the work of the European Movement, and to outline the discussions that took place in the context of the Congress of Europe and the subsequent European Cultural Conference (1949) on fostering a European spirit through initiatives in the field of education. The timeframe reflects the initial discussions on uniting Europe until the Treaty of Rome establishing a European Community and evidence is provided by documentation on the European Movement, consulted at the Historical Archives of the European Union.
Chapter 3 The road to a European Community education policy (1957ā1970) outlines the emergence of a formal place for education in European integration. Emphasis was placed on the development of activities in education at European level with a cultural attachment in order to foster European spirit. However, tracing the development of an education policy at European level reveals a shift in the nature and missions of activities. Despite marked attention during early discussions on uniting Europe, education was not included in the 1957 Treaty of Rome setting up the European Community. Closely related was a provision for vocational educational training, and although it left a door open for education, it meant that activities with an economic attachment drove forward policy development. The chapter aims to summarise the development of a European Community education policy from 1957 until 1976, when education took shape as a formal competence of the European Community. It aims to reveal how member states and the European Community have approached cooperation in the field of education and the establishment of a formal policy field, namely that its association with the economic and political missions of the European Community facilitated its path and shaped its purpose at European level. Evidence is drawn from European Community documentation at the Historical Archives of the European Union as well as European Community communications and policy documents.
Chapter 4 Developing a Community level education policy (1971āpresent) continues the historical account of EU education policy from the point when the European Community began to hold a recognised competence in the area of education, in particular the āJanne Reportā of 1973, which was completed by the Belgian Minister for Education to pinpoint the basic elements of an education policy at Community level. Two action programmes, the Social Action Programme and the Education Action Programme, followed swiftly, helping to cement Community activities in the fields of education and training. The 1980s were peak years for education policy, which saw the creation of the Erasmus Programme and new Education and Training Action Programmes, and the 1990s saw further restructuring and reforms in Teaching and Learning as steps towards the learning society. The Lisbon Strategy of the 2000s threw focus onto lifelong learning and the Open Method of Communication. Finally, the last decade has witnessed ever intensifying activities, especially through the Europe 2020 Strategy, which has placed education high on the agenda to reinforce a knowledge economy in Europe. Research has been carried out through the study of policy papers and EU documentation.
Chapter 5 An intellectual hub for Europe: The College of Europe and the European University presents the complex creation of these institutions, the latter of which took almost three decades to establish due to conflicting interests and the implications of cooperating in education at European level. The creation of these institutions acts as an informative case study for demonstrating how European cooperation of the field of education translates into practice. This chapter traces the European University project from its roots within the European Movement discussions to the establishment of the European University Institute in Florence and the College of Europe in Bruges. The chapter is based on archival research at the Historical Archives of the European Union, where documentation from the European Movement as well as the European University Institute was consulted. The timeframe reflects the first discussions on the European University in the framework of the European Movement until the European University Institute was established.
Such a significant role for education in the early stages of European integration should have implied an im...