In the context of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, EAEA and its Irish member AONTAS, the National Adult Learning Organisation, have published a joint statement on the role of adult learning and education in delivering Europe’s priorities. EAEA and AONTAS support the Presidency’s focus on values and democracy, security and resilience, and competitiveness and delivery, and argue that none of these can be achieved without adult learning. With the negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) ongoing, the statement makes the case for keeping the EU budget up to the task.
Read the full joint statement: Adult Learning at the heart of a resilient, democratic and competitive Europe.docx
EAEA and AONTAS’s five key messages are:
1. Democracy starts with empowered learners
In a fast-changing information environment, literacy and basic skills are no longer enough on their own. Adults also need digital and media literacy and an understanding of AI to recognise disinformation and take part in democratic life. Adult learning gives people the confidence and agency to do so – and learners must also have a voice in shaping the policies and systems that affect them. In Ireland, community-based voter education programmes have helped women vote for the first time, and supported one learner who had lived in the country for 23 years without knowing she had the right to vote.
2. Resilience is built in communities
Europe’s security cannot be understood only in military or technological terms. Community-based adult education creates trusted, accessible learning spaces that reach adults facing barriers to formal education. Initiatives such as AONTAS’s Community Education Against Disinformation workbook show how community educators are already helping learners think critically, check facts and understand how algorithms and AI shape what they see.
3. Competitiveness needs every adult on board
Across OECD countries, around a quarter of adults have low proficiency in literacy and numeracy, and Europe is still far from its target of 60% of adults participating in learning every year by 2030. Participation remains strongly shaped by socioeconomic background. The Draghi Report identified skills as a key barrier to competitiveness, yet by July 2026 only 15.7% of its recommendations had been fully implemented. Community education offers a proven route back into learning: in Ireland, it has led learners into further and higher education and into sectors facing labour shortages, such as social care and childcare.
4. Cuts cost more
Investment in adult learning is part of Europe’s social and economic infrastructure, not a cost. Cuts do not make needs disappear: they shift costs elsewhere, into skills shortages, unemployment, exclusion and weaker democratic resilience. The effects are already visible on the island of Ireland, where further education cuts in Northern Ireland have reduced enrolments by 7,748 and hit ESOL, essential skills and community education provision.
5. The next EU budget must invest more, not less
EAEA and AONTAS call on Member States and EU institutions to:
- ensure the final MFF does not fall below the Commission’s proposed envelope of €1.98 trillion;
- protect and name adult education in Erasmus+, supporting the European Parliament’s position of €47.39 billion;
- secure dedicated budget lines for adult and community education in the ESF+ within the National and Regional Partnership Plans, with a clear breakdown of the 14% social floor as a minimum;
- guarantee sustainable support for community-based providers and make sure simplification genuinely improves access to EU funding for smaller organisations.
The Irish Presidency has an opportunity to show that values, resilience and competitiveness are not separate ambitions: all three depend on people being able to keep learning throughout their lives.
Text: Greta Pelucco