ABSTRACT
When in 1985 the European Commission published its White Paper, Completing of the Internal Market,1 a general discussion in the Netherlands began to develop on the economic effects of the completion. By then education was not really a topic in the discussion, because the White Paper did not pay much attention to this aspect. Nevertheless, the European Commission created a taskforce, Human Resources, Education, Training and Youth, in which European educational programmes such as Force, Eurotecnet, Lingua, Petra and Comett were brought together. After the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, in which articles were introduced on general education and vocational training (Articles 126 and 127), education became an explicit concern of the European Union.
