NEWS

Catherine Day's Address

My first reaction to the invitation to speak to your conference, and one which includes themes such as spirituality was that this was very far away from my daily work and not a topic on which I had much to say - but when I started to think about it I saw lots of connections between your work as educators and mine in one of the key Institutions of the EU.

I see from your publication on Heritage and Horizon that the Society seeks to “educate the whole person as a responsible member of society”. Let me start with a personal remark: I have always been grateful for the education I received in Mt Anville. It instilled in me a sense of responsibility, the importance of personal integrity and the need for values. Since I work at the heart of the EU civil service I thought I would speak to you about the importance I attach to putting values at the heart of everything the EU does. I’m sure that as school principals you will identify with this core

The EU is usually perceived an economic entity and that is the core of its daily business. But it is about much more than that. Article 2 of the Treaty of Lisbon states: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail”.

The Lisbon Treaty is accompanied by the Charter of Fundamental Rights which recognises the inviolable right to human dignity, the right to life (so no EU country uses the death penalty), to respect for private and family life, freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It also contains the right to education and the rights of parents to “ensure the education and teaching of their children in conformity with their religious, philosophical and pedagogical convictions”. When implementing EU policy and law the EU Institutions are bound by the Charter as are the Courts.

Of course there was a lot of controversy when some Member States refused to have a reference to God in the Treaty. But this does not mean that the EU is godless! Several Member States have a strict separation between church and state and could not accept such a reference, particularly as those who advocated it wanted to stress Christian values whereas Europe today is much more multi denominational than just its Christian tradition.

So what does this mean in practice? I will give some examples. First of all it means enshrining these principles in EU law and then enforcing them if necessary through the Courts. It is the job of the Commission, where I work, to be the referee and to make sure that all our Member States live up to their commitments to each other and to their citizens, even when it is difficult. It also means working alongside Member States, providing financial support to implement some of these principles and sharing best practice to change things on the ground. We all know that equal pay for women was one of the early benefits of Ireland’s EU membership. But there is still work to do in the area of gender equality and there is still a gender pay gap in Europe. Some minorities, such as the Roma, still face active discrimination so we are working to provide support programmes in education, job searches etc.

Many of our newer Member States from central and eastern Europe longed to join the EU, not only because of the economic prosperity it would bring but also for the personal freedoms it represents and guarantees. Of course some of these changes take time and even after accession, there are still problem to be worked out. For example, we are still working with Romania and Bulgaria to change their legal system, to make sure that politicians respect the independence of judges and that judges feel able to be impartial. There is a lot of political influence and corruption still in both countries – recently in Bulgaria there have been major public protests including against the corruption of the public sector. These things take time to change but little by little a new generation of lawyers and judges are coming to the fore, wanting to build a more decent society for their fellow citizens. They need the constant support and pressure from “Brussels” to be able to make the changes that the populations crave.

I think setting – and respecting - high standards in public office should also be the hall mark of European countries. Human nature does not change so there will always be rotten apples that spoil the barrel – but having systems in place that pick them up and deal with them is what marks out a society or an organisation with values. During the financial crisis of the last 5 years how often have we all lamented the greed of those bankers who put their own short term gain above all other considerations? Trying to make sure this will not happen again, for example by legislating for a cap on banker’s bonuses.

In my own work, as a head of Department and as the head of the civil service of the European Commission I try to regularly call the attention of colleagues to ethical standards. This is particularly challenging in a multi-cultural organisation. For example we do not allow staff to accept gifts or hospitality over EUR 50. We have rules (cooling off periods) for Commissioners and senior staff when they leave office. We have a register of lobbyists and very extensive rules on transparency (freedom of information) so that everyone knows they are accountable for each and every action.

I also want to come back to the aim of the Sacred Heart Schools to educate responsible members of society. Again to hark back to the crisis, that sense of responsibility to society was sadly missing. During the boom times many countries including my own seemed to lose their humanity in the pursuit of wealth. It is sad that we had to go through such a catastrophe to rediscover the importance of community, of solidarity and of helping our neighbours.

Unacceptably high levels of youth unemployment and rising levels of poverty will take time to reduce. Although most of the responsibility for these issues lies with the member states, at national level, the EU has been trying to help. We proposed and with the help of the Irish Presidency got agreement on a Youth guarantee so that all young people agreed between 16 and 24 would be in education, training or work within 4 months of leaving school or being unemployed. This is now being rolled out across the EU. We have significantly increased financial support for food banks – it is shocking that in rich Europe people still go hungry.

Since the Sacred Heart Society is all about education let me also say a word about the European dimension of education. Many of you will be aware of the Erasmus programme which enables university students to spend time studying in another European country. This is a great way for them to get to know another culture and another way of life. The feedback from participants is very positive.

The EU has few direct powers in education - which I think is fully understandable since parents have strong views about their children’s education and the way it is delivered and financed is so inherently national. But that does not mean that there is no EU involvement. As part of our growth strategy (Europe 2020) we have 2 education targets - to have 40% of the population with third level education or training by 2020 and to reduce the number of school drop outs (those leaving school without any qualifications to below 10% - which is still too high a number for comfort). These are not legally binding targets. There are no sanctions if they are not met. But they are benchmarks, ways of showing Member States what they need to aim for if they want to stay competitive and maintain living standards in the age of globalisation. And no one wants to be at the bottom of the league table.

Through the structural funds the EU is funding a lot of physical infrastructure in schools and colleges, labs etc. It also funds a huge number of training courses and apprenticeships. One of the important things we do is bring teachers and trainers together to exchange best practice and learn from each other. Some of you may be involved in some of our programmes such as Comenius or Eve, the platform for sharing information on education projects. Like everyone else we are also developing digital ways of bringing people together and are now developing new distance learning tools.

More and more EU economic and social policy is emphasising the importance of education. It is clear that Europe can only compete globally by constantly moving up the value chain and this requires more investment in education and training, better quality education and lifelong learning. At the same time as we have very high levels of unemployment in parts of Europe, especially among young people, we have around one million unfilled vacancies and a growing skills gap in many areas. All of this means there will be a growing public policy interest in education and a lot of debate about “what kind of education policy” should be pursued and also the basic question of “what is education for?” As I said earlier I find the Sacred Heart definition a very good one.

Mount Anville
October 18, 2013