ABSTRACT
In the area of education and vocational training the Community adopted from the beginning a pragmatic and functional approach to cooperation considering it to be a reflection of progressive harmonisation of economic and social policies. In the area of social policy the Community quickly shifted from the concept of harmonisation, which entails advanced integration, to those of coordination, cooperation, cohesion or convergence, which allow for greater diversification. The general approach to the professional recognition of qualifications represented an effort on the part of the Community not only to bypass altogether the issue of harmonisation but also to separate professional recognition from academic recognition. The notion of recognition was associated with that of mutual trust set on the ground of excluding the principle of equivalence of study programmes. The principle of subsidiarity was envisaged to respond to the discrepancy existing between 'political' and 'economic', by supposedly defining the political content of European integration.
