The 2012 Joint Report proposed to “step up cooperation between the Education Committee and the Economic Policy Committee, Employment Committee and Social Protection Committee … [to] ensure that ET 2020 feeds in to the Europe 2020 process, including in terms of the use of monitoring indicators”. A number of Council conclusions (notably those of February 2013 and 2014) stressed the importance of increased cooperation between the Education Committee and EMCO to ensure a better alignment of ET 2020 with Europe 2020.
Cooperation between Education Committee and EMCO
The Education Committee is part of the Council structure, preparing Council agendas and papers. It has no task formally in the European Semester. In contrast, EMCO is not part of the Council structure, but is an advisory body with responsibility for the multi-lateral surveillance of the CSR's. In this role it provides opinions to the Council. Perceiving that it lacked requisite expertise to conduct this multi-lateral surveillance in relation to education-related CSR's, EMCO asked the Education Committee to support its work and initiated a joint review process already in the 1st European Semester.
This is technically an ad hoc arrangement by the chairs of the Education Committee and EMCO. In reaching an evaluative judgement on these arrangements it needs to be taken into account that the cooperation is unique: for example CSRs with a research component are handled by ECOFIN, with no input from DG RTD. Each Semester cycle, EMCO runs a set of review meetings as part of its multi-lateral surveillance, e.g. during the last cycle these included meetings on the “Youth Guarantee" and “Higher Education and wider education reforms". EMCO invites the Education Committee to the events related to some of the education- related CSR's. The review of CSRs takes place using a multi-lateral surveillance method, with Member States organised into pairs of reviewing and reviewed countries, with all other members contributing to the discussion. The reviewed country presents what action it has taken in relation to its CSRs. The reviewing country critically assesses the actions, whilst it is also open to all other Member States to ask questions. The chair of the meeting draws conclusions for each CSR, outlining the scope for future action.
In terms of the effectiveness of these arrangements, interview and documentary evidence (from internal reviews) suggests that cooperation between EMCO and the Education Committee has improved significantly. It also suggests that there is scope to make improvements. While the method is useful for EMCO’s production of an opinion on the balance of the CSRs, the time and structure of meetings is less useful to individual Member States, and countries are less willing to be critical of one another than in the employment field. Nonetheless, the outputs from these review meetings are useful to EMCO which uses them as inputs to its work in the one-month period between the European Commission proposing CSRs and their adoption by the Council.
In relation to the Director-General peer reviews so far organised (VET and schools), the chair of EMCO has attended the one on VET and signalled that if they prove to be useful they may be used in the long run not only to complement but also to replace discussions in the EMCO-led joint reviews. Advantages of the DG peer reviews are:
They are attended by senior level decision-makers with expertise in the field. EMCO attendees are not necessarily experts in education and training, being from employment or labour ministries, so the level of debate tends to be more detailed in the DG peer reviews;
There is longer to discuss CSR's and the issues they raise: there is only 45 min to discuss a Member State's CSR in the EMCO reviews; and
There is no set structure and more detail reports can be produced.
Participants in the DG peer reviews have generally found them to be beneficial (as noted in the reports produced) and EMCO has already used the outputs from the peer reviews.
Integrating the different elements of ET 2020
Once CSRs have been adopted by Council, the challenges they raise are raised by DG EAC in the Working Groups and discussed. The new Working Group mandate has strengthened this process. However, it is important to note that Working Group attendees are not necessarily involved in the European Semester or National Reform Programmes at home. Employment ministries sometimes deal with the education-related CSRs, which is a potential weakness in the chain from OMC outputs to action in Member States. In this context the Working Groups are an opportunity to make the attendees aware of CSRs.
Higher Education provides a good example of how the different elements of ET 2020 can be sequenced with respect to the CSRs (which actually predates the new mandates). The Higher Education Working Group identifies the challenges stemming from the CSRs and organises country-focused workshops (previously PLAs). Reports from the country-focused workshops are made to the Working Group and DGHE, the latter of which then determines topics to be dealt with by the Working Group over the following 6 months. This approach is generally reported to be effective in terms of its clarity and transparency.