The importance of lifelong learning and creating a learning society is fundamental to meet the challenges of economic and social change and sustainable development that we face today. In the light of recent job losses across Europe, effective retraining and education will be even more important in helping to adapt the skills of workers to enable them to find new jobs. For this to be effective, sufficient resources have to be made available, of course.

But Lifelong Learning has a much wider significance than that. It is also important for personal fulfilment and as a means of developing responsible citizenship - encouraging people to play a full part in their community. So it can help break the cycle of poverty and unemployment. Through informal and non-credited learning it can also be a very effective way of attracting both adults and young people in disadvantaged areas who are those most threatened by social exclusion and poverty but who often have a negative attitude towards formal education.

Unfortunately, the Commission's White Paper missed the opportunity to produce a comprehensive and complete report, including examples of good practise, which would have been of great value to all those working in this field. It doesn't contain enough information on how effective or cost-effective various actions were; it doesn't take account of the contribution of the European Social Fund; and there is little information on what was done to target specific groups such as women, elderly workers, immigrants, families in disadvantaged areas, the long term unemployed and disabled people.

So whilst there are universities, colleges and community groups across the EU carrying out excellent work in this field, this report does not really reflect that. Neither does it say whether there has been any progress on the call by this Parliament in 1997 for greater co-ordination between EU programmes which deal with education and training.

So even as an interim report on an ambitious White Paper, this is a disappointing summary of progress on this most important issue.