The Education, Youth and Culture Council, meeting in Brussels on 10-11 May, is set to deal with sport for the first time ever. Changes under the Lisbon Treaty allow the EU to ‘contribute’ to the promotion of European sporting issues, notably promoting fairness and openness in competitions and protecting the physical and moral integrity of sports people. Ministers will no doubt want to know more about the forthcoming communication on an EU agenda for sport and the proposal for a first EU sport programme, which should run for 2012-2013.

Another major topic for the Council meeting will be progress by member states in setting national targets to reduce the number of early school leavers as well as the target to increase the proportion of young people in tertiary education. These targets should be adopted by the European Council, on 17 June.

At the Council meeting, Androulla Vassiliou, the commissioner for education, culture, multilingualism and youth, will outline measures aimed at boosting lifelong learning as well as the ‘New skills for new jobs’ initiative. The latter envisages measures, such as better partnerships between education and training institutions with the wider world, as well as alternative skills recognition schemes.

Other issues for the ministers include the role of education and training in enhancing social cohesion, social mobility and the fight against poverty and social exclusion. This has been a key theme for the Spanish EU Presidency. Ministers will also rubber-stamp a document calling on the Commission to develop an EU international higher education strategy. The goal is to improve coherence between existing initiatives at EU and national level.

As regards youth, there should be a resolution on the youth dimension of the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy. The latter proposes a new initiative entitled, aptly, ‘Youth on the move’. Due to be launched in July, the initiative will aim to improve learning mobility, employability and the social integration of young people. Vassiliou, together with Spanish, Belgian and Hungarian ‘youth’ ministers, will meet with the European Youth Forum and national youth councils.

Other topics include culture. Here, the Council will rubber-stamp a report on establishing a ‘European heritage’ label as an EU action. The label would be given, by an independent panel, to ‘select’ sites, symbolic for European integration, ideals and history. Similarly, ministers will discuss the designation of Umea and Riga as European Capitals of Culture in 2014.

Vassiliou also gets a chance to outline her recent green paper on unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries. A public consultation is ongoing in this area.

EUROPEANA

Finally, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes will expand on the digital library Europeana. Kroes should urge ministers to speed up work on the digitisation of cultural work so as to boost the availability of Europe’s cultural heritage on Europeana.