MEP Hannu Takkula, Vice Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education, emphasised the importance of language learning to the aim of giving Europe a leading place in the knowledge economy.

However, he said politicians often concluded their considerations on important challenges by stating teachers play a vital role in mediating between a rapidly changing world and the individuals who have to cope with it: “Dumping the task onto teachers as such does not, of course, resolve the issues in question”.

Mr Takkula said teachers should not be left alone in a profession becoming ever more complex and important and that teacher education policy was closely connected with other key European policy areas. In November 2006, the Barcelona Council stated that teaching staff should be supported by continuous professional development and by good cooperation with parents, pupil welfare services and the wider community.

In the context of the EU‘s current trends in education, the ALTE conference theme had been carefully and wisely chosen and Mr Takkula added his own endorsement to the conference’s intention to “construct a bridge between the world of education and language assessment and the EU community’s educational, social, cultural and economic environment and context".

As representative for the East Anglia area of England, MEP Richard Howitt welcomed the delegates to Cambridge and also to the second day of the conference.

He said he was proud that the secretariat of ALTE was in Cambridge, putting his constituency in the heart of language learning and the principle of multilingualism.

Mr Howitt said that multilingualism was at the heart of the European Parliament, with Maltese and Irish being recent additions to the list of recognised languages that can be spoken in the parliament.

Mr Howitt spoke of his work in seeking to bring the Western Balkan states and Turkey into the European Union, and he invited the members of ALTE to consider ways in which they could work in partnership with other organisations to ensure that this future enlargement of the European Union is successful.