Van Brempt (PSE), rapporteur. – (NL) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are discussing a report on an area for lifelong learning. This report forms part of a process started a few years ago which has already received some attention at the Stockholm and Lisbon European Councils, for example. However, it was primarily the Feira European Council that concluded that lifelong learning would be crucial to the development of our European society in terms of social cohesion, employment opportunities and suchlike. It also called on the Member States, the Commission and Parliament to develop strategies and a policy. It is in this framework that we now view the Commission communication and, particularly, the memorandum that was published prior to this.

I should now like to take some time to consider the areas of attention which Parliament highlights in its report. Allow me to start with the principles on which the concept of lifelong learning should be based. This is a matter of great importance and often discussed, but the question is: are we using the same guiding principles? We have already underlined a number of these principles in Parliament's first report. I shall outline them here very quickly.

The first is democratisation and the principle of equality – of crucial importance, in my view. If we fail to provide better and equal access to education and training via lifelong learning, then we have failed in our objective. Everyone knows that there is a yawning chasm between the highly qualified and the poorly qualified. If we cannot reduce this chasm and do not succeed in doing this via lifelong learning, then we have failed.

A second crucial principle is, in fact, the right to individual personality development. This does not only encompass lifelong learning, it also recognises the wider social value of lifelong learning. This is about the right to work on one's own personality development without necessarily focusing on the jobs. In addition, we need to strike the right balance between, on the one hand, a right that we have to create for our citizens, a right that we, as a government, must be able to make reality on the basis of our own resources, and, on the other hand, the individual's duties and responsibility.

A second vital aspect which still needs a great deal of attention – and I am addressing the Commission, in particular, here – is formal and informal learning. Formal learning is very important in the Union, because we need to ensure that our citizens' qualifications are also recognised in Member States other than their own and that the citizens know that their qualifications are equivalent elsewhere. This is why the Commission has proposed the European curriculum vitae, to be replaced in due course by the portfolio system. I welcome these, but they strike me as somewhat vague and the link with informal learning is distinctly missing.

Informal learning is precisely what this is all about. We must ensure that we can validate, certify and also verify informal competences, or the competences acquired elsewhere, for this is, once again, the key difference between those who have a qualification and who can build on it, and those who do not have a qualification, those who have already dropped out. We could incorporate the latter by recognising informal learning. In this area, the Commission still has a great deal of work to do, Commissioner, for we are, in fact, nowhere at the moment. Along with my fellow MEPs, I trust that you, together with the Member States, will develop the instruments required for this purpose.

I have already mentioned individual personality development and the fact that not only is lifelong learning is important, it is important to recognise its wider social value too. In my first report, and now in the second report as well, I have introduced the concept of the individual learning account. We would very explicitly ask the Commission to look into this and consider, working together with the European Investment Bank, whether we could not free up resources to invest in what is so valuable to us, namely our human capital.

I would like to finish off with a few critical remarks. I notice that we in the Union are capable of formulating clear objectives, or even of enforcing them. The Maastricht standard, the employment strategies and the benchmarks all prove this point. In the field of scientific research, we have the courage to introduce a benchmark, but we are clearly lacking the political courage to do this for education and lifelong learning. This is, in fact, causing me concern, for I do believe that it is vital that we should do this.

On a final note, I should like to say that we must find a new way of describing 'lifelong learning' as a matter of urgency, for it sounds like a sentence. If we have to say to our school leavers: you have done well, you have your qualifications now and you can now learn for the rest of your lives, then this will hardly motivate them. We can write the finest speeches and adopt the finest policies, but if our people and our students refuse to cooperate, then I fear, Commissioner, that these words will not be translated into action. And this is exactly what we need to avoid. I therefore suggest we might need to involve a communications agency that can produce a different name for lifelong learning.