Due to the history of the membership of each country in the EU and the ‘official’ politics concerning the Learning Regions and Lifelong Learning you can find different roles of EU policies.

The Learning Region of the Lake of Constance (Germany) had not much to do with EU policy in a direct way. Of course the network cooperated with the DLR who got money from the ESF. Furthermore there was a cooperation with regions in Austria and Switzerland. Switzerland now wanting to found learning networks as an outcome of the Learning Regions in Germany.

In Dundee (Scotland) there is no doubt that influences from both international and European Union concepts and definitions of learning cities and regions have had an impact and on how it intends to develop and sustain the Learning City concept. However, the main drivers have been to combat social exclusion, to promote sustainability in the environment and the economy and to develop active citizens able to shape influence the future direction of their city. The Dundee Learning City can also be seen as the latest iteration of an ongoing attempt by the local authority in partnership with stakeholders in both the public and private sectors and with the involvement of community and voluntary groups to address the issues which face the city. The body the preceded the Partnership was formed in a period of economic uncertainty in the city and the current economic context also offers a period of increasing uncertainty in relation to public sector finance and the provision of public services.

On the other hand Lundaland (Sweden) is a good case for contributions within the Grundtvig sector, as most of the participants are adults and the projects are bottom-up generated from the citizens in the region. Some of the issues that are at stake in this case are Educational services as they are offered in the traditional way versus micro-learning on-demand, i.e. opportunities to learn based on local needs and requirements and offered on-demand with a fit to the context of the learners. Employability concerns of traditional models versus entrepreneurship, i.e. instead of waiting to apply to a potential vacancy or new job on the job market people try to create their own job by orienting their specific competences as offers to potential clients or customers. Flexibility and creativity allowance for the micro-projects versus strict adherence to the administrative routines set up for documentation of the development process.

As a difference to Scotland and Sweden the City of Learning in Limerick (Ireland) at a stage of development was influenced more by local and national than by European policies. Some reference was made in early – through representation of the University of Limerick on the Steering Group – to the EU Lifelong learning Programme. There was acknowledgement later in the process (early 2005) of the results contained in the Irish national Report: “Achieving the Lisbon Goal”. The report concluded that City and County Development Boards, as well as area-based partnerships were playing a key role in ‘measures to improve the integration of different learning sites’. It was stated that ‘projects such as the “City of Learning” (Limerick) are providing models of good practice in this field.’

Similar to that the initiative of the network Kaunas (Lithuania) – the Learning City emerged inspired by the existing research and the experience accumulated by KTU researchers rather than under direct influence of EU policies. The researchers involved the Division of Education of Kaunas Municipality, which provided its enthusiastic support to the proposal. After that Kaunas became a member of the European Lifelong Learning Initiative (ELLI), was included in the European Commission Learning City projects and involved in other international activities (in particular, the SOCRATES project PASCAL European Network of Learning Regions - PENR3L).

In Romania the EU plays a very important role both in the overall regional policies of Romania and particularly in promotion of initiatives relevant for the learning region approach. The project run in the region of Bucharest-Ilfov is the first major initiative in this area. A special role play the European developments in the area of LLL, Romania lagging behind not only in promoting a regional dimension of lifelong learning strategy, but also in promoting a national, coherent and adequately funded national strategy. One of the highest challenges will be the financing of the progress after a decrease of European funding.

The Forum in Hungary considers the LEADER programme in the EU as a relevant initiative for local development. This is an example that is worth researching as an alternative of learning city-region format in the region of Pécs, too. Furthermore the university has a very significant role in local and regional context to promote critical thinking and active citizenship.