1. Roger O'KEEFFE
Principal Administrator, Directorate General for Education and Culture, European
Commission
Speech
Regional Trade or Integration Agreements
Global Meeting of University Associations
Alexandria, Egypt
14-15 November 2005
Bionotes
Currently working in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and
Culture, in the unit responsible for coordination of lifelong learning policies. Responsible inter
alia for promotion of cooperation between national administrations with a view to developing
their lifelong learning policies, and for relations with international organisations in the field of
education. Was responsible for the development of an EU position on education in what
became the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round.
Has been working in the Commission on policy development in the field of education, training
and youth since 1993, and was a member of the team which organised the European Year of
Lifelong Learning in 1996.
Previously dealt with European regional policy and structural funds, both in the European
Commission, which he joined in 1989, and in the Irish Department of Finance, where he had
already been dealing from a national perspective with the administration and coordination of the
European structural funds (Regional, Social and Rural Development).
Abstract
The EU – A regional trade/integration agreement and an alternative to the GATS?
The European Union’s origins lie in the European Economic Community, colloquially known
as ‘The Common Market”. As such, it is committed to eliminating obstacles to circulation of
goods and services, as well as of persons and capital, between its Member States. It is also
an active partner in global trade negotiations. In the Uruguay Round it gave substantial
commitments on education services, to the extent that these are privately funded. In most
EU countries, however, there is a widespread political and popular commitment to education
as a mainly publicly provided service.
Beyond being a common market, the European Union is a sui generis political construct,
based on shared values and some pooling of sovereignty (the preamble to its founding
Treaty refers to an “ever-closer union” between the peoples of its Member States). Some of
its programmes, including the Erasmus programme based on mobility of students between
Member States, directly serve this purpose. Facilitating student mobility has given rise to
flanking measures such as cooperation on curriculum development, recognition of study
periods abroad etc. The powers formally shared at EU level in relation to education are
quite limited, but Member States are willing to cooperate informally.
The consensus among EU countries is that, while they have abided by the spirit of the GATS
in opening up privately funded education services, trans-frontier education provision is better
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2. dealt with by other means. The Commission has therefore actively supported several
international processes, which are centred on educational values rather than trade
considerations, including the Unesco/OECD draft Guidelines for Quality Provision in Cross-
Border Education or the follow-up to the Bologna Declaration. Through instruments like the
Jean Monnet chairs and the Erasmus Mundus programme, which exist alongside national
education cooperation programmes, the European Union also seeks to strengthen contacts
between the European education area and the wider world.
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