The Eurydice Network is the Education Information Network in Europe. It consists of a coordinating European Unit and a series of national units; its aim is to provide policy makers in the European Union Member States with up-to-date and reliable information on which to base policy decisions in the Education field.
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The Eurydice Network is the Education Information Network in Europe. It was established by the European Commission in 1980, following a request by the then European Community Ministers of Education in their resolutions of 1976[1].
In those early days of Education policy within the European Community there was considerable suspicion among some Ministers of Education of what the European Commission might do; their original action programme thus limited actions at European level to those that could not impinge on national sovereignty: this included the exchange of information and documentation. The Commission established the European Eurydice Unit directly; and following some years' negotiations, the network held its first meeting in 1980.
The network consisted originally of a European Unit and one or more units set up by Education Ministries in each of the then 9 Member States. These national units were normally located within Ministries responsible for Education, although in some cases (e.g., England) they were outsourced to research or documentation bodies. In federal countries (such as Germany or Belgium) the more than one unit was needed to respond to the structure of education in the country: thus, in Germany one national Eurydice Unit was established inside the documentation service of the Federal Ministry for Education; and another in the Conference of State Ministers of Education, which brings together the Education Ministers of the federal states.
This structure has continued: the addition of more EU Member States with successive enlargements of the European Union has in each case been preceded by participation of the new country within the Eurydice network. In addition, the European Economic Area countries also participate. At the end of 2006 there were 35 'national' units in 31 countries. Swiss participation is expected in 2008, along with its participation in the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme.
The network, under the coordination of the European unit, works in a number of permanent fields as well as where requested by Education Ministers or the European Commission. Apart from preparing basic and readily comparable information on the education systems of participating countries, the network's areas include:
The Eurydice European Unit's publications list may be downloaded here [3].
The Eurydice network was conceived as dealing solely with Education, excluding training. There were two reasons for this: first, the European Community had specific legal competence in the field of vocational training (cf Article 150 of the Treaty of Rome); in education, however, it had no legal competence, and the European Community Member States were at that stage keen that it should not acquire any. Secondly, a European Community Agency – the "European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training", generally known by its French Acronym "CEDEFOP"[2] already existed. In the early years of the Eurydice Network, many Ministries of Education had no responsibility for vocational training and those who did in were generally responsible only for initial vocational training (i.e., during the obligatory schooling period); so this separation of functions worked well: Eurydice dealt with Ministries of Education and CEDEFOP dealt with Ministries of Labour or Employment. However, with the development of policies towards Lifelong Learning it has become necessary for Eurydice, CEDEFOP and the European Training Foundation to work more closely together, and there have been a number of joint publications[3].
Initially the European Commission supported the Eurydice Network through a grant to the European Cultural Foundation. While this was administratively simple, it led to some confusion of roles and to questions about the identification of the network with the Commission and the European Community. The Commission therefore decided to incorporate the funding of the Eurydice network into its main education action programme. The network thus became an "action" of the SOCRATES programme until 2006; as of 2007 it is an action of the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013.