National authorities and other institutions in Europe and in the rest of the developed world are urgently facing the need to define a set of achievable priorities for reform of their education systems, together with their health and pension and other social inclusion (welfare) systems, while being constantly under hard economic conditions, in the context of the international financial instability. Modern societies in the 21st century needs to undertake well-documented, focused and relevant human and social capital building actions, eloquently linked to integrated employment and growth supporting policies. Societies need to build on good practice regarding collective EU – as well as international – action.
The much needed human and social capital development policies and the corresponding integrated actions, aiming at boosting the capacity of the welfare systems to offer reliable lifelong learning and professional development as well as other social inclusion services in the 21stc societies which are often hit by heavy recessions, correspond to the necessary structural reforms.
In this context, the European experts’ community, with a long-standing and broad-range experience as it regards the evolution of the evidence-based policy making, need to get engaged in such a demanding effort. While moving into uncharted waters, we could claim that the main outcome of this “problem setting exercise” should comprise a focused and integrated set of actions aiming (a) at consistent capacity building, while (b) delivering concrete, short- to mid-term results, with those structural reforms boosting growth, supporting employment and fighting unemployment thus serving social inclusion. This set of actions should ask for increased sophistication and need to adopt an inter-governance perspective, in order to build and effectively implement highly demanding policy reforms, and deliver on both short and long-term basis.