Brussels, 2 May 2023
From 28 to 30 April, EU Commission gathered a Citizens’ Panel in Brussels for the third and final session of deliberations on how to expand learning opportunities abroad to everyone. The ideas put forward by the citizens turned into 21 concrete recommendations aiming to facilitate the mobility of learners, educators and staff from one country to another.
With the general goal of making the learning environment more accessible for everyone, the panel’s recommendations highlight the importance of increasing further the awareness of opportunities and encourage the participation of people with fewer opportunities. They also outline opportunities and challenges brought by digitalisation and explore sustainable solutions to reduce the environmental impact of mobility.
Over three weekends in March and April, 150 randomly selected citizens of different age groups and backgrounds from all 27 Member States discussed and identified obstacles to learning mobility abroad. They pointed out key areas for improvements and prioritised solutions to increase access and participation to learning experiences abroad, regardless of age and educational field, from school education to vocational education and training, as well as higher education, adult learning, and also non-formal learning settings.
The recommendations will feed into the Commission’s proposal for a Council recommendation, planned later in 2023. The recommendation will also be a guiding framework for the Commission to address incentives and barriers to learning mobility. The recommendations of the Citizens’ Panel are available here. In parallel, the Commission is also running online public consultations about learning mobility until 3 May.
Source – EU Commission