Task Force Education and Youth /
Enhanced Graz Process

The Graz Process was initiated by Austria, during its EU presidency in 1998, in order to promote democratic and peaceful development in Southeast Europe by supporting and co-ordinating educational co-operation projects in the region.

In 1999, at the EU's initiative, the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe was adopted in Cologne under the German EU presidency. In the framework of "Working Table 1 - democratisation and human rights", education and youth were identified as one of the priority areas. The Graz Process was put in charge of the co-ordination of the Task Force Education and Youth within the Stability Pact. More countries and organisations had joined the Graz Process in the meantime, and it had evolved into the Enhanced Graz Process (EGP).

In November 1999 an expert conference of the Enhanced Graz Process was held in Sofia, at which objectives, principles and action plans were developed. The following stage was characterised by the setting up of a working structure encompassing institutions and actors both from the region and outside.

The thematic focuses as established at the Sofia conference resulted in a division into six Working Groups.
This six Working Groups from which half of the members came from South Eastern Europe were lead by international institutions and supported the work of the Task Force in co-ordinating and promoting co-operation between international institutions and experts and/or initiatives from the region, developing and implementing action plans, evaluating projects and helping in the development of projects.
• Policy Development and System Improvement (Co-ordinating institution: OECD)
• History and History Teaching (Co-ordinating institution: Council of Europe)
• Higher Education (Co-ordinating institution: EAU - European University Association)
• Vocational Education and Training (Co-ordinating institution: European Training Foundation)
• Education for Democratic Citizenship and Management of Diversity (Co-ordinating institution: Council of Europe)
• Young People (Co-ordinating institution: Council of Europe)
In 2003 working group co-ordinators and Task Force members agreed that the focus of the Task Force‘s future work will shift from project level to a long-term systemic approach presented within the Education Reform Initiative of South Eastern Europe (see Activities / ERI SEE) and existing networks and expertise be included in another platform of this initiative.

In 2000 during a first round of Quick Start Projects initiated within the framework of the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe 44 projects in the field of education and youth received sufficient funding and their implementation processes started.

In 2001 the Southeast European Educational Co-operation Network - which was one of the quick start projects- went online providing key documents on education reform in the languages of the region.

From 2000 to 2002 in order to analyse the status quo of education developments the OECD carried out Thematic Country Reviews covering the entire education systems, focusing on curriculum, teacher training, governance/management and early childhood. The Thematic Reviews were the key element of the "Strategy 2001". (> Strategy 2001)

In 2002 the Task Force Education and Youth/ Enhanced Graz Process launched a second call for projects in targeted areas in the field of Education for Democratic Citizenship, History/History Teaching and Young People. (> New Priority Projects)

The Task Force Education and Youth/ Enhanced Graz Process
has about 40 members, including European and international institutions and organisations (Council of Europe, European Commission, OECD, UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, etc).
The focus of our work gradually shifted from emergency measures and a project based network to long-term policy reforms on system level.

With the initiation of ERI SEE the Task Force Education and Youth/Enhanced Graz Process enters a new phase - the inclusion of South Eastern European countries into the wider European Area of Education. (please see ERI SEE).