The ideational policy trajectory of EU adult learning and skills policies up to covid-19

This chapter traces continuity and change in the evolution of the ideational foundation of EU adult learning and skills policies. Based on historical and discursive institutionalism, the chapter assumes that EU adult learning and skills policies have emerged in specific historical and discursive contexts, which have framed their policy trajectory, namely their underpinning justifications, policy solutions, and actors’ behaviours (Schmidt 2020). From this perspective, critical junctures, like the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, make more dramatic policy change possible. Building on official documents, secondary literature and interviews, the analysis brought to the fore that the original unbalanced combination of social and economic ideational underpinnings has been reinforced at critical junctures, namely the 2008 economic crisis and more recently COVID-19 pandemic. The latter has produced incremental rather than dramatic change of EU adult learning and skills policies, mainly leading to minor adaptations of their ideational trajectory, which was eased by governance structure.