Education and science are areas where the
EU's role is limited to supporting national
governments. In education, the policy was
mainly developed in the 1980s in programmes
supporting exchanges and mobility. The most
visible of these has been the ERASMUS
programme, a university exchange programme
which began in 1987. In its first 20 years
it has supported international exchange
opportunities for well over 1.5 million
university and college students and has
become a symbol of European student life.
There are now similar programmes for school
pupils and teachers, for trainees in
vocational education and training, and for
adult learners in the Lifelong Learning
Programme 2007–2013. These programmes are
designed to encourage a wider knowledge of
other countries and to spread good practices
in the education and training fields across
the EU. Through its support of the Bologna
process the EU is supporting comparable
standards and compatible degrees across
Europe.
Scientific development is
facilitated through the EU's Framework
Programmes, the first of which started in
1984. The aims of EU policy in this area are
to co-ordinate and stimulate research. The
independent European Research Council
allocates EU funds to European or national
research projects. The Seventh Framework
Programme (FP7) deals in a number of areas,
for example energy where it aims to develop
a diverse mix of renewable energy for the
environment and to reduce dependence on
imported fuels.
Since January 2000 the European
Commission has set its sights on a more
ambitious objective, known as the European
Research Area, and has extensively funded
research in a few key areas. This has the
support of all member states, and extends
the existing financing structure of the
frameworks. It aims to focus on
co-ordination, sharing knowledge, ensuring
mobility of researchers around Europe,
improving conditions for researchers and
encouraging links with business and industry
as well as removing any legal and
administrative barriers. The EU is involved
with six other countries to develop ITER, a
fusion reactor which will be built in the EU
at Cadarache. ITER builds on the previous
project, Joint European Torus, which is
currently the largest nuclear fusion reactor
in the world. The Commission foresees this
technology to be generating energy in the EU
by 2050. It has observer status within there
are various agreements with and there is
collaboration with ESO. These organizations
are not under the framework of the EU, but
membership heavily overlaps between them.
