They have highly educated populations

On average, EU citizens enjoy a very good education system, which is obviously vital for economic development. Thus, a high proportion of children at the age of 4 in the EU (around 85 per cent) have the benefit of pre-primary educational institutions. Compulsory education lasts for nine or ten years in most EU countries, starting from the age of 5 or 6. Ratios used by statisticians show that the EU-27 average situation is better than in other developed countries (for example, Japan and the United States), be it pupil–teacher ratios or youth education attainment levels. More than three-quarters of all 18-year-olds within the EU-27 remained within the education system in 2007.

However, the situation is far from being perfect. The proportion of the population aged 25–64 in the EU-27 who had a tertiary education in 2008 was under 25 per cent. Some studies have established that ‘an additional year of average school attainment raises productivity by 6.2 per cent and by a further 3.1 per cent in the long run through the contribution of faster technical progress’. With rapidly ageing populations, raising the productivity of the labour force in European countries will increasingly become imperative in order to maintain standards of living. Therefore, the target aimed at by the EU with the ‘European 2020 Strategy’ is to increase the share of the population aged 30–34 who have completed tertiary education from 31 per cent to at least 40 per cent. In 2007, less than half the Member States, mostly among the EU-15, had already reached this target. In comparison with the United States, the situation is not favourable: in 2007, the United States devoted 2.9 per cent of its GDP to education, compared with a mere 1.4 per cent for the EU as a whole; moreover, spending per student in the United States, including public and private contributions, is roughly double that of the EU.