Eight EU countries hit 2020 education goals early: Eurostat

The figures were released by Eurostat on Thursday (11 April) as part of its monitoring of the five headline targets defined in the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy, adopted in 2010 by the EU’s 27 heads of states and governments (see background).

On education, the EU aims to reach a level of 40% of 30-34 year olds having received a college or university degree by 2020, up from 34% in 2010.

Many countries are still way off that target, according to Eurostat, with Italy (21.7%) faring the worst among the 27 EU states, followed by Romania (21.8%), and Malta (22.4%). This is in sharp contrast with best performers such as Ireland (51.1%), Cyprus (49.9%), Luxembourg (49.6%) and Lithuania (48.7%).

In total, the EU average has climbed up to 36% or 2 percentage points more than in 2010, which the European Commission welcomed as good news for Europe's future growth and prosperity.

“The progress in achieving our education targets is a positive message in a time of economic uncertainty,” said Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth.

“The jobs of the future will demand higher qualifications and these figures show that more young people are determined to achieve their full potential,” she said.

Bar set too low

But overall, the bar seems to be have been set too low for many other countries, which have easily overshot the EU-wide target of 40%.

Indeed, the share of 30-34 year olds with a higher education degree was above 40% in 12 member states (Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK), the Commission said.

And eight have already met or exceeded their national-specific goals, which were defined afterwards country-by-country in order to meet the EU average. These are Denmark, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.

Vassiliou did not deny suggestions that the targets may have been too easy to meet. “The countries set their own national targets, which are designed to contribute to the overall EU targets,” she said.

“In some cases we would have preferred that the national targets were more ambitious, but we can't force member states to change them,” Vassiliou told EurActiv in emailed comments.

Other EU officials admit in private that the bar may have been set too low. But they stress that targets have to be seen in a dynamic way and that the EU average was 34% when they were agreed in 2010, and even as low as 32.2% the year before. With 36% now, there is therefore still some way to go before the EU reaches the headline goal of 40%.

EU process in doubt

The easy attainment of EU education targets, seven years early, may not be such good news after all for the European Commission, which has struggled to get member states agreeing on education goals in the first place.

At worse, it could make a mockery of the whole ‘Europe 2020’ target-setting exercise, which has been marred by national tensions since the beginning.

Britain for one, refused to sign up to targets altogether, arguing that the EU had no say on education. When the bloc’s 27 education ministers met to define national goals on tertiary education, Britain simply refused to cooperate, arguing it was under no legal obligation to do so.

A footnote in the Eurostat figures reads that there is “no national target for the United Kingdom”.

>> Read: Britain defiant on EU education goals

Germany too had strong reservations about letting Europe peek into its education system, arguing that this would step on its national powers.

When EU leaders discussed the issue in 2010, José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, had to intervene personally and explain that a "convergent education system" was not on the agenda. "Some countries say education is not an area of Commission competence but you cannot talk about competitiveness without speaking about skills, education and innovation," Barroso fumed.

Berlin finally abandoned resistance after receiving assurances that the EU monitoring process would not interfere with its federal structure.

>> Read: Germany abandons resistance to EU's 2020 education goals

However, Germany did not drop – and eventually won – the argument over the definition of diplomas that can qualify for “tertiary education,” which were defined as levels five and six in the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Austria, whose education system is similar to Germany’s, also lobbied for the definition to be adapted.

But the standoff was apparently not fully resolved.

As with Britain, the Eurostat table leaves a blank space in the column where the national target for Germany and Austria is supposed to appear, citing a discrepancy in the figures provided with the agreed EU-wide definition.

“The definition of the current national target for Germany and Austria does not fully correspond to the definition of the data published in this table,” Eurostat soberly states in a footnote attached to its table.