The enhancement of the European dimension in the national curriculum is a large scale educational innovation that affects many European countries. This report puts forward the proposition that broad scale educational innovation has more success if the aims and objectives find their way into textbooks. The reasons why a European dimension in education is important are the existence of an international political consensus and the influence of a common market with free trade, commerce, and the free movement of people. The general aim is to provide young people with meaningful opportunities to acquire the knowledge, insights, attitudes, and skills necessary to participate constructively in a changing Europe. Embedding the European dimension into the existing curriculum of educational systems in European countries consists of the selection of textbooks and information supply within the school and exchange programs outside the school for teachers and students. From a 1992 textbook analysis of Dutch geography and history textbooks, the results indicate general conclusions about European issues in history and geography textbooks of which three are highlighted: (1) geography textbooks in general give more attention to the European dimension than history books; (2) the fact that young people can make a contribution to tackling transnational problems hardly occurs in the textbooks analyzed; and (3) the methodological approach to the European dimension needs to be improved through attention to skills that develop an investigative attitude and judgment formation. (CK)