The Council of Europe participated in the OECD Skills Summit 2026, held on 27-28 April in Istanbul under the theme "Unlocking Talent Across Generations", bringing a distinctive perspective to the discussions.
In his written position the Head of the Education Department drew attention on the "fourth megatrend" sitting alongside demographics, AI, and the green transition: the fragility of democratic culture in societies where skills are developed and deployed. Noting that young people in vocational programmes — half of all upper secondary learners in the EU — consistently show lower levels of civic participation, institutional trust, and political engagement than their academic peers, he argued that skills policy and democratic resilience face their greatest shared challenge in exactly the same population.
The Council of Europe used this written position to present the forthcoming standard setting instrument on developing a culture of democracy in Vocational Education and Training — the first instrument of its kind across the Organisation's 46 member states. The instrument calls on member states to embed competences for democratic culture as recognised elements of VET qualifications, to extend professional development for teachers and workplace trainers, to develop digital citizenship beyond technical AI literacy, and to build legal frameworks guaranteeing VET learners genuine participation in the governance of their institutions.
On plurilingual and intercultural competences, the written position challenged the tendency to treat language as a specialist concern, arguing that in ageing societies increasingly dependent on migration and in structurally transnational labour markets, the capacity to communicate across languages and cultures is a core economic competence. The Council of Europe reaffirmed its commitment to high-quality, equitable implementation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), citing its ongoing five-year project on foreign language education in Türkiye as a model for evidence-based national reform.
Recalibrating education: a question of purpose
In Session 1 on 28 April, Villano Qiriazi opened his intervention by posing a question he described as prior to all others: not only how to recalibrate education systems for the megatrends, but to what ends. If the answer is framed solely in terms of employability and labour market alignment, he argued, we risk losing sight of what makes formal education indispensable to democratic societies —its mission to prepare free, informed, and responsible citizens.
On curricula, the Council of Europe presented the four pillars of its digital transformation agenda: AI literacy, teaching and learning with AI, EdTech evaluation, and governance of AI systems in education. At its core is a three-dimensional model of AI literacy — technological, practical, and human — in which the human dimension is explicitly prioritised as the Council of Europe's distinctive contribution. This dimension encompasses the ethical, socio-political, cognitive, cultural and environmental implications of AI. The Council of Europe's position is unambiguous: AI literacy is not one more technical competence to be added to curricula — it is a civic competence, a condition for democratic participation in an AI-shaped world, rooted in human dignity. It must therefore be integrated at all levels of education, from early childhood to higher education.
On the teaching profession, the Council of Europe was equally clear: teachers must remain the central actors of the educational process. Technology must support, not replace, their pedagogical judgement. This requires three guarantees — the protection of professional autonomy in the face of AI tools; structured social dialogue on the introduction of those tools in schools; and initial and continuing training that goes beyond technical use to include critical understanding of AI biases, limitations, and cognitive effects. A forthcoming White Paper on the Teaching Profession in the Digital Age will set out these requirements in full.
On governance — and here the Council of Europe offered what Villano Qiriazi called its most structurally significant contribution — the intervention challenged a widespread assumption in current debates: that AI has already entered, or will inevitably enter, education, and that the only question is how. The Council of Europe's position is different. Democratic societies and their educational institutions must first be able to decide — sovereignly and on an informed basis — whether, how, and under what conditions AI enters education at all. This is why the Council of Europe is developing a dedicated legal instrument on AI use in education, complementing the Framework Convention on AI (CETS No. 225) and the EU AI Act by addressing what those instruments do not cover: the non-consensual nature of compulsory schooling, the particular vulnerability of children, the collective character of the educational good, and the long-term effects of AI on the cognitive and civic development of learners.
A coherent Council of Europe voice
Across both days, the Council of Europe advanced a consistent argument: that the skills agenda and the democracy agenda are not parallel tracks, but two dimensions of the same challenge. The most urgent test case for both is vocational learners — the population most underserved by skills systems and citizenship education alike, and the one where the stakes of getting this right are highest.
The OECD Skills Summit 2026 brought together ministers and heads of delegation from OECD member and partner countries. The next edition will be hosted by Bulgaria in 2028.
Further information on the Council of Europe's work on education, democracy and AI is available at www.coe.int/education.
