The Conference “Skills for life as the key to lifelong learning, towards achieving the Lisbon strategy”, held on 17 May 2004 in Brussels, was the culmination of the first year’s work of the European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning. Representatives of its six member organisations, EAEA, EVTA, EFVET, EURO-WEA, SOLIDAR and CSR Europe, had worked together to identify key issues and analysed sixty examples of practice, from which 25 best practice examples had been selected to illustrate seven main requirements or ‘pillars of learning’ for skills for life. The aim of the Conference was to share the Platform’s findings with a wide range of organisations and to encourage and facilitate debate to lead to the development of ideas for future action. One hundred and forty people from a wide variety of organisations enrolled to attend the Conference. In addition to learning about the Platform’s findings, the audience fully participated in the debates, raising important and problematic issues and making suggestions for future work for the Platform.