PREFACE

Since the communication from the European Commission "Promoting Apprenticeship Training in Europe" (COM(97) 300), action around apprenticeship and other forms of work-based training has continued at a steady pace. The European Commission stressed apprentice mobility and a European Dimension in apprenticeship as a key to making it more effective. This was followed up by the Council's Decision on the promotion of European pathways for work-linked training, including apprenticeship (1999/51/EC, OJ L 17, 22.1.1999). This Decision established the EUROPASS Training, a document to record that ‘the holder has completed one or more periods of work-linked training, including apprenticeship, in another Member State'. At national level, measures to extend and update apprenticeship and to introduce more alternating courses or work placements to school-based training routes have developed, particularly in response to the National Action Plans for Employment (Guideline 1- tackling youth unemployment, Guideline 6 – Easing the transition from school to work).

CEDEFOP produces regular updates on apprenticeship at national level. In 1994, CEDEFOP first asked its Documentation Network to provide a description of the apprenticeship system in the then twelve EU Member States, on the basis of a questionnaire, which provided the titles for the 14 headings in each report. This information was then used as the basis for the comparative study, "Apprenticeship in the EU Member States: a comparison", produced by CEDEFOP in 1995. The revised national reports were added to this web site in 1997, and reports from Austria and Finland were included.

This 1999 update is further enhanced by a short description of a new apprenticeship system in Sweden, which will become a permanent option in upper secondary education from August 2000. A report has also been added for Norway, where interesting developments have been taking place in the apprenticeship, since Reform94.

CEDEFOP analysed the reports as the basis for the discussion paper, Promotion of apprenticeship and other forms of work-related training in Member States, which was prepared for the meeting of the Directors General for Vocational Education and Training, 27-28 September 1999, Rovaniemi, Finland. This paper is included here in English, French and German.