The Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU), represents school students rights in Europe since 1975 and has ever since been advocating for participatory, inclusive and quality education. OBESSU welcomes the efforts of the European Commission to establish a European Education Area by 2025 but is concerned about the lack of funds that are dedicated to this purpose and that will undermine the realisation of such an ambitious endeavour.
The main programmes that are supposed to finance education and training and create the European Education Area, – namely the Erasmus+ programme, Horizon Europe, the European Solidarity Corps, the European Social Fund Plus, the InvestEU Fund and the Digital Europe Programme – have been subject to budgetary cuts in the agreement on the long-term budget of the EU for 2021-2027 reached in July 2020 compared to the ambitious proposals of the Parliament which Commissioner Gabriel was requested to back up in her mission letter. Moreover, the lack of a common vision on education and training and the absence of guidelines for strategic national investments from the Recovery Funds on education and training will also affect the implementation of the initiatives put forward in the Communication. To achieve the targets set by the Commission, education and training systems will require higher and structured public investments.