Vocational education and training is more complex than academic education. It is also subject to important differences among countries due to at least two factors: a) the particular fabric of the productive system of the country and b) the involvement of social actors (employers and unions) as well as the labor market relations and the balance between capital and work. Historical and comparative VET has deployed a series of analytical tools which have contributed to identifying different patterns of existing VET systems. Some institutions have also worked in order to help vocational education advance in the past decades: among these, the Cedefop has twice devised future scenarios in VET, at the turn of the 20th century and right before the Covid-19 pandemics. The combination of current VET systems and suggested scenarios indicate that transformations are subject to negotiation among actors within countries (administration, employers, unions, teachers) and across countries; as well as subject to the legitimation of decisions before the wider society. Author contends that vocational education and training systems are complex and that the question of where they stand is something that most countries ask themselves, particularly preoccupied with economic global competition. He explains why the sociology of conventions may be appropriate when reading these scenarios. In the final section of his paper, author will conclude the paper with a few questions that are the result of a first approach to the Cedefop scenarios through the sociology of conventions. Author emphasizes that Cedefop scenarios are possible futures as such, and they will only become enacted if there are actors able to struggle for them and, along with these struggles, the futures will evolve not necessarily in the same way they were foreseen. It is also essential that the actors be in a position to fight, therefore relying upon a democratic leeway that is perhaps too much of an assumption or an overstatement. Applying the sociology of conventions to the VET scenarios can be considered as an invitation to reconsider the strongly rooted civic values of Europe being a space for freedom, citizenship, and democracy ruled by human rights and equality. Actors of VET in European countries and at the European level have the chance, at a time of instability and change, to search for their sources of legitimation and to compromise in ways that might prove relevant to developing inclusive and equitable societies through VET.

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