EU ministers are meeting in Sweden to discuss the way forward for "lifelong learning" initiatives among member states.

The issue is a key policy area for the UK government. Europe's ministers will also set out future research priorities in Europe, including the controversial areas of biotechnology and food safety.

Baroness Blackstone represents the UK on education issues and Lord Sainsbury on research.

After a joint meeting on Friday ministers break into two groups, one to discuss education issues and the other to discuss research on Saturday.

Education ministers will be addressing the issue of "lifelong learning", a concept which had its genesis in the EU, which is now a staple of the UK government's education policy.

On February 12, the EU education council adopted a report setting out future objectives for the educational system - in particular the importance of all citizens being able to read and count. Measures to achieve this worth £1.5 billion were announced in the UK on Thursday. The report will be discussed by EU heads of state and government at the Stockholm summit later in the month.

The ministers will grapple with the challenges posed to education systems by globalisation, ICT developments, rapid changes in the labour market, demographic shifts, equality issues and EU enlargement.

Research ministers will be discussing a proposed new framework programme for research. The latest proposals have some new ideas including measures to increase mobility for researchers, to create research groups across EU borders, and proposals for priority research areas. Key areas are biotechnology, information technology and food safety.

The order of priority will be discussed by ministers, Swedish education minister and chairman of the meeting Thomas Ostros said "we expect there to be differences among countries concerning the priority order proposal. We are all in agreement that we need to concentrate our energies on fewer fields, but each member state wants to prioritise its own field".

The research programmes last four years, the fifth framework ends in December 2002 and the sixth framework programme applies 2002-2006. The council and parliament will decide on the programme during 2002 with implementation in 2003. The current programme is worth around 15 billion euros and is the EU's third largest budget item. The new framework programme will have a budget of 17.5 billion euros with grants allocated to fewer, but larger research projects. At present the commission handles nearly 20 000 individual research projects every year.