Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the non-formal dimension of education within the youth policy strategies and actions of the European Commission and the Council of Europe. The preliminary hypothesis is that European youth policies are suspended between ‘nonformal education’ and ‘non-formal learning’, two alternatives that are not clearly fleshed out, nor distinguished. Via keyword search employing the terms ‘non-formal education’ and ‘non-formal learning’, this paper identifies and analyses the most relevant recommendations and documents produced in the last three decades by the European Commission and the Council of Europe. The chosen methodology is suitable to pinpoint the recurrences of the concepts (non-formal) ‘education’ and ‘learning’ and to provide an interpretation of the relevance and prevalence of one or the other in the European debate. Empirical research tools, most notably semi-structured interviews conducted with experts of the Youth Department of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the Youth Partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe in Brussels, and the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg, complement document analysis. The interviews provide evidence of the different aspects that have been attributed to the non-formal dimension, as well as the contributions made by the different institutions and actors involved in this regard.