Brussels, 9th May 2025 – Today we celebrate Europe Day – marking the anniversary of the ‘Schuman Declaration‘, a historic proposal made by Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister, that laid out the foundation of the European Union. This proposal is considered the beginning of what is now the European Union. 

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Discover the story behind his visionary ideas and how they helped shaping the EU as we know it today. 

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EfVET was founded to represent VET stakeholders in Europe, creating a network to secure a voice across Europe in the policy area and to promote good practices and knowledge-sharing to enhance innovation and excellence in VET learning. Just as Schuman’s declaration paved the way for the European Union, our daily work consists of empowering VET centres through international mobility, strategic cooperation, peer-learning among VET trainers, managers and learners.  

Many are the challenges ahead of the EU institutions when it comes to VET: increasing financial support to the VET players for internationalization; reducing constraints to global partnerships; consolidating the practices of Vocational Excellence; encouraging #microcredentials for a real #skills #portability; finally, make VET really a first choice.  

We are doing our best! Thanks to Erasmus+ fundings, including #CoVEs, #Blueprints, #cooperations, #mobilities, for 35 years the EfVET community has been actively building our European Union, based on the values of collaboration, freedom, respect and democracy. Thanks to their daily work, our community is vibrant and active part in the realization of the Union of Skills, a further and crucial step in our integration process.  

This is why we will be happy to celebrate the second European Day of VET on next May 24th!   

Happy Europe Day!