EU‐level competence development projects in agri‐food‐environment

Abstract

Purpose – The European Commission and social partner organisations at EU level encourage the lifelong development of qualifications and competence. This is reflected in many policy reports and reviews. This paper seeks to show the involvement of social partner organisations at the level of EU‐funded competence development projects.Design/methodology/approach – A survey and four case studies were conducted. The population of 60 Leonardo da Vinci projects for a specific sector (agri‐food‐environment) which were implemented during the years 2000‐2003 was selected for the study. For the survey project, documentation was analyzed based on two variables: type of project (to what extent did it require involvement of sectoral social partner organisations); and (the percentage of) involvement (of sectoral social partners who were involved in the partnership). A Spearman correlation test was used to evaluate the relationship between type of project and involvement. For the case studies project documentation was ana...