LIST OF PANELS

Since the 1990s, the strive for raising the level of adult skills and educational qualifications have been pursued by a large part of advanced democracies. Gaining the right skills for the labour market is considered a precondition for successful and competitive economy and full employment. With the deepening of European integration, the EU action on lifelong learning has shifted from a programme-based to a more comprehensive approach better embedded in the overarching socio-economic approach of the European Union. In the wake of the new millennium, the Lisbon Council fully included education and training as one of the building pillars of the knowledge economy (Council 2000). In terms of governance, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) was set up to ensure that member states improve their education and training systems towards European standards, which were to contribute to achieving growth and full employment. Yet the OMC has delivered mixed results (De la Porte and Pochet, 2012), not only in the field of education and training (e.g. Veiga and Amaral 2006), but also in social inclusion and pension policies. As a renewed ‘governance architecture’ (Borras and Radaelli 2011), the Europe2020 strategy was meant to relaunch the OMC while setting the bar higher for education and training objectives. The heavy tool of the economic crisis on member states’ economy and the fear of not achieving the ambitious goals set in the strategy urged the EU to set up a more constraining and closer monitoring of national policy developments. Launched in 2011 the European Semester is a yearly exercise that includes the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament and the member states and aims to jointly tighten fiscal and economic matters within the Union. Recent analyses have underlined that the European Semester and its evolving nature (Crespy and Schmit 2017) are: 1) challenging the existing power distribution among EU actors by shifting the balance in favour of EU institutions (European Commission and European Council) (Verdun and Zeitlin 2018; Milana 2020); and 2) affecting the existing relation between social and economic policies. The way in which the European Semester affects both the EU governance architecture and the balance between its policy components is still under discussion in the literature (Milana 2020, 120). Moreover, it is still to determine whether the European Semester triggers Europeanisation through similar learning mechanisms already identified for the OMC (de la Porte and Pochet 2012) or whether new dynamics are at play. This is particularly relevant for those member states that have been under ‘special surveillance’ because of strong economic imbalances.  While changes in relation to macro-economic and social policies have been widely discussed, little attention has been paid to the role that the European Semester has for lifelong learning policies which are instrumental for reaching overarching socio-economic objectives.

The complementary focus of this panel is on new funding opportunities for education and training with the aim of reducing (young) unemployment. The Youth Guarantee and the Upskilling Pathways are two examples of new programmes launched in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy. On top of being launched in more constraining governance settings, these funds have specific features as compared to ‘regular’ European Social Funds opportunities that might increase their potential for Europeanisation (Bussi and Graziano 2019). The question is then to investigate whether Europeanisation mechanisms already explored in the literature on European funds and Europeanisation (e.g. Vanhercke et al 2011) apply to these cases too.

Bringing together studies on EU governance (De la Porte and Pochet 2012) and on the Europeanisation of education and training (Lawn and Grek 2012), the two leading research questions of the call for papers aim at: 1) developing further knowledge of the dynamics of lifelong learning policies at the European level, but also of their impact that the national level; 2) unveil what novelty the European Semester has brought in terms of new governance tools; finally, 3) investigate fundamental overlaps and connections that lifelong learning policies have with broader social, labour market and economic policies.

This panel is interested in providing new insights and open new research avenues in the field of European lifelong learning governance and policies and their effect at the national level. In particular, it focuses on two understudied aspects that have emerged recently or have gained relevance in recent years: the role the European Semester for lifelong learning policies (e.g. Stevenson 2019) and the role of new funds available to member states for implementing human capital enhancing measures (e.g. Youth Guarantee or Upskilling Pathways) (Milana et al 2020).  Existing research suggests that a new turning point in the EU education and training policies has been reached due to these changes (Antunes 2016, Stevenson 2019, Milana et al 2020) yet its effects at the EU and national level are still under-investigated. To respond to these gaps, two broad questions structure this panel:

1Q: To what extend has the European Semester changed the role of the European Union in the field of lifelong learning? Through which mechanisms of Europeanisation does it influence national policies?

2Q: To what extent new or renewed funding opportunities for lifelong learning have an influence on national policies?

This panel invites contributions that deal, but not exclusively, with one of more of the following topics: 1) the changing role of the EU over lifelong learning in the context of the European semester; 2) the changing relationship between lifelong learning and economic and social policies in the framework of the European semester 3) the Europeanisation mechanisms associated with the renewed EU governance architecture and their effects on national lifelong learning policies; 4) the role of new EU funds in shaping lifelong learning policies at the European level.

We encourage papers from a broad range of disciplines, with a theoretical and/or empirical stance, adopting a qualitative/quantitative or mixed-methods approach, and providing a comparative perspective.