The panoply of EU development programmes related to education has been well charted (e.g. Ertl, 2003). First the EU’s largely internal ERASMUS schemes and then the outgoing development programmes for Central and Eastern Europe (PHARE, after their original title as Poland and Hungary Action for Reconstruction of the Economy) and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union

*University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY, UK. Email: [email protected]

(TACIS, Technical Aid to the Confederation of Independent States) were launched at times of critical political change: ERASMUS at the moment when the members of the European Community agreed in 1986 a common framework of training and professional mobility and a court ruling of 1987 established that this could include post-school courses leading to employment; PHARE from 1990 on the collapse of the Iron Curtain; and TACIS from 1993 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Treaty on European Union, agreed at Maastricht in December 1991, for the first time included education as such; moreover, its articles 126j and 130j permitted involvement with third party countries. Whereas the ERASMUS schemes were initially to do with post-school education as training, neither PHARE nor TACIS was specific to the education service; economic regeneration was the priority, and specifically education projects formed a very small part. Only later would the PHARE programme be seen largely as a transition to EU membership.