scholarly journals Adult Education in the EU and the Main Challenges in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-95
Author(s):  
Simona Polonyová

The importance of adult education in today’s world is constantly growing. The need for adult education in the EU intensifies with demographic and climate changes, automation, new technologies as well as digital transformation. Adult education provides an opportunity for individuals to adapt to changes in the labour market and society, especially for the low-skilled and older workers. Although people understand the importance of adult education, progress in achieving participation rates in adult education towards the EU target is insufficient. The current situation associated with COVID-19 has further highlighted the importance of non-formal adult education, especially for the most vulnerable groups of people to whom it has created or deepened barriers to education. It emphasized, even more, the problem of limited digital skills and equipment, reinforced the need for the importance of the right skills from a work and social perspective and the need to build resilience. It has set out new challenges aimed at strengthening the adult education strategy at the EU level, at promoting civic, financial, environmental and health literacy, as well as structural support to countries where such support is absent, and at ensuring stable and adequate funding with specific support for vulnerable groups of the adult population. The study aims to present a current view on adult education in EU conditions and to point out the main challenges that adult education has to face in the context of lifelong learning regarding the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 522-527
Author(s):  
Michael D. Rogers ◽  

Technology Assessment (TA) is the study and evaluation of new technologies with the objective of understanding the likely impacts (costs and benefits) of these technologies on society and the environment – with the explicit aim of improving regulatory decision making concerning these technologies. This is a prospective exercise helping to ensure that “better” regulatory decisions are made by decision makers. TA and “TA like” activities are embedded within the main EU institutions. The Commission carries out Regulatory Impact Assessments on every significant regulatory proposal. It also has at its disposal a range of advisory groups which includes the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies and the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies. The European Parliament has its own TA unit – the Science and Technology Options Assessment unit. The institutions are committed to quality, transparency and effectiveness in their use of expert groups and all such assessments are published on the internet. Occasionally full citizens’ consultations are carried out but this is not a formal requirement. Recent changes in the regulatory development process have emphasised the concept of “smarter” regulations. This concept is concerned not just with prospective analyses in advance of new regulations but also with the retrospective evaluation of existing regulations asking the question“Did they meet the need that was the raison d’être for enacting the regulation under consideration.”The distinction highlighted by Churchill [2] that experts should advise but not decide is intended to ensure that regulators take account of aspects other than the expert view. Nevertheless, it is essential that expert groups have the right to introduce advice thatmight otherwise be overlooked by the regulators, as is the case in a number of expert groups in the EU institutions.


Author(s):  
Jorrit J. Rijpma

This chapter shows how in the 21st century new technologies and new bureaucracies have become part and parcel of the EU’s migration and asylum policy, and how these two are intimately linked. Together they have allowed the EU and its Member States to tighten their grip over the movement of people. The use of technology has transformed the nature of the European border and has reinforced the agencies in charge of its management. This has largely been done without a clearly defined vision or grand design. Rather, it was technology itself that enabled this development and has greatly helped to shape it. While technology has often been portrayed as value-neutral, it may now pose challenges to some of the EU’s fundamental rights, most notably the right to data protection.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Campina ◽  
Carlos Rodrigues

The unexpected pandemic 2020 context brings to humanity the effective relevance to the minimum existential, to the human rights, more than the discourse, but the real need of the protection from the main legal instruments. The paper proposes and discusses the connection with the need for tax collection by the states to meet the expenses of the social state, namely for education expenses, and whether the economic limitation caused by the current pandemic in face of the sharp decline in GDP and which has necessarily associated with a large decrease in the collection of tax revenues, which may compromise the right to education. From the findings of the study, concerning the new technologies and their dependence, the actual context shows that it is not an option but an effective need for everyone, so the states and the international community have the obligation to generate conditions of the best access and should promote the pedagogical need in this subject.   Keywords: Fundamental rights, social state, taxes, property protection, education.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Marek Danikowski

The right of EU citizens residing in another Member State, to vote and stand in elections to the European Parliament is a major achievement of the European democracy. In the light of EU citizens’ still insufficient knowledge concerning the opportunities and benefits brought in by this right, it is worth making this institution more familiar to themin a straightforward way, at the same time balancing criticism towards the idea of the EU.


Author(s):  
Guido Raimondi

This article comments on four important judgments given by the European Court of Human Rights in 2016. Al-Dulimi v. Switzerland addresses the issue of how, in the context of sanctions regimes created by the UN Security Council, European states should reconcile their obligations under the UN Charter with their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights to respect the fundamentals of European public order. Baka v. Hungary concerns the separation of powers and judicial independence, in particular the need for procedural safeguards to protect judges against unjustified removal from office and to protect their legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary is a judgment on the interpretation of the Convention, featuring a review of the “living instrument” approach. Avotiņš v. Latvia addresses the principle of mutual trust within the EU legal order and the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the Convention.


Author(s):  
Petra Molnar

This chapter focuses on how technologies used in the management of migration—such as automated decision-making in immigration and refugee applications and artificial intelligence (AI) lie detectors—impinge on human rights with little international regulation, arguing that this lack of regulation is deliberate, as states single out the migrant population as a viable testing ground for new technologies. Making migrants more trackable and intelligible justifies the use of more technology and data collection under the guide of national security, or even under tropes of humanitarianism and development. Technology is not inherently democratic, and human rights impacts are particularly important to consider in humanitarian and forced migration contexts. An international human rights law framework is particularly useful for codifying and recognizing potential harms, because technology and its development are inherently global and transnational. Ultimately, more oversight and issue specific accountability mechanisms are needed to safeguard fundamental rights of migrants, such as freedom from discrimination, privacy rights, and procedural justice safeguards, such as the right to a fair decision maker and the rights of appeal.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-301
Author(s):  
Salvatore Fabio Nicolosi ◽  
Lisette Mustert

In a resolution adopted on 1 February 2018, the European Committee of the Regions noted that a legislative proposal of the European Commission concerning a Regulation that changes the rules governing the EU regional funds for 2014-2020 did not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. Accordingly, the Committee considered challenging the legislative proposal before the Court of Justice if the proposal was formally agreed upon. Although at a later stage the European Commission decided to take into account the Committee’s argument and amended the proposal accordingly, such a context offers the chance to investigate more in detail the role of the Committee of the Regions in the legislative process of the EU and, more in particular, its role as a watchdog of the principle of subsidiarity. This paper aims to shed light on a rather neglected aspect of the EU constitutional practice, such as the potential of the Committee of the Regions to contribute to the legislative process, and answer the question of whether this Committee is the right body to guarantee compliance with the principle of subsidiarity.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Carlos Arroyo-Abad

Faced with protecting the right to privacy and, with it, the inviolability of homes, the development of new technologies and the possibility of developing work from home has opened the door to a series of new conflicts that require us to provide a specific legal framework by which such situations can be addressed. In the Spanish case, we speak of Law 10/2021 from 9 July on remote working. The objective of this study is to assess the scope as well as the problems that this law generates during its application, regarding controlling the provision of services. However, we not only identify the incidental factors, but also provide a necessary reinterpretation of the right to privacy from the perspective of the inviolability of homes, especially when its current articulation may operate to the detriment of employees’ rights, as contradictory as this may seem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Agota Giedrė Raišienė ◽  
Violeta Rapuano ◽  
Kristina Varkulevičiūtė

Despite the huge number of studies on telework in 2020, the influence of socio-demographic characteristics of workers on their attitudes towards telework continues to raise questions. Researchers agree on some aspects, such as younger individuals being better at absorbing new technologies. However, given that not only those who wanted to but also those who were obliged to switched to teleworking, it appears that younger people may not be as effective at working remotely as previously thought. The relevance of our study is based on the contradictory findings of research conducted during the pandemic. With this article, we contribute to the accumulation of knowledge about the change that takes place in telework. The paper aims to examine the relationship between socio-demographic indicators and the evaluation of telework. Our study confirms that the gender and age of employees are important factors in an employee’s attitude to telecommuting. Mostly, the attitudes vary in terms of gender. At least in the case of Lithuania where the research was conducted, Millennial men, unlike other generations and significantly more than Millennial women, see personal career development problems working remotely. Meanwhile, older generations do not declare greater dissatisfaction working remotely, although they do not express much favour for this approach. The results of the study indicate that in the circumstances created by the pandemic, organizations should update their human resource management strategies to achieve employee work efficiency and maintain employee motivation. The practical implication of our study in terms of open innovation is that in the future, the development of virtual working relationships will need to focus not on the technological training of older workers but on the specific provision of feedback to younger workers. In this regard, our insights may be useful for leaders in human resource management and open innovation teams.


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