The Treaty of Maastricht established a specific competence for education alongside the already existing competence for vocational training. Thereby, the Member States have given official status to a development which has already been anticipated – at least partly – by the practice of the Community institutions.
The scope of this publication is to describe and to analyze this dynamic process taking into consideration also the relevant activities of the Council of Europe and the OECD in this field. Special attention is given to the programms started by the Community in the wider field of education. This gives the occasion to highlight the opportunities offered by programms such as “Socrates”, “Leonardo da Vinci” and “Youth for Europe III”.