Examining the impact of European strategies and priorities is one of the main tasks involved in managing the sustained development of vocational training. Several key aspects are involved. First, there is the question of which mechanisms and management instruments should be implemented. We should distinguish between instruments that are deliberately planned and implemented (e.g. the Open Method of Coordination (OMC)) and those that arise not from intentional developments or fields of application but from the particular situation and legal conditions (e.g. conviction, reasoning). In either case, we know little about how these mechanisms operate within vocational training. The absence or insufficiency of methods for measuring impact, and the lack of clarity between cause and effect, make it even harder to examine this field.

Impact research and education policy analysis based on consultation with the countries (Members of the European Union), current research findings and on the analysis of the European Commission's papers

It is against this background that this contribution focuses on some basic strategies and priorities aimed at promoting Europe’s competitiveness and at achieving the Lisbon goals. Using the development of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) as a starting point, we examined its conception, its purposes and implementation, but above all its impact.