Thessaloniki (GR), March 2009 - A major conference organised by Cedefop under the auspices of the Czech Presidency of the EU (Thessaloniki, March 16-17), Continuity, consolidation and change: towards a European era of vocational education and training, is to be opened by Ján Figel', European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, the Czech Minister of Education Ondøej LiÅ¡ka and Greek Minister of Education Aris Spiliotopoulos.
The conference will discuss how far Europe has come in making its vocational education and training systems a world reference for quality - and what direction its policies should take beyond 2010.
At the centre of the debate will be the results of Cedefop\'s Policy Report. This is a biennial review of progress on the implementation of European priorities in vocational education and training (VET), originally agreed by European ministers, the European Commission and the European social partners in Copenhagen in 2002.
The aim of the Copenhagen Process is to bring European policy-makers together to make vocational education and training more attractive, more relevant and more efficient. Today, all citizens can benefit from the outcomes of initiatives such as Europass, and there is a broad consensus on the value of further developing European tools and instruments such as the European Qualifications Framework. Together, such instruments contribute to a new era in vocational education and training for Europe.
