This document, which is intended to stimulate debate among vocational education researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, provides a comprehensive overview of the development of vocational training policy at the European level over the past 40 years. The following are among the topics discussed in the document's eight chapters: (1) moving from a common policy to a European Community policy; (2) moving from policy to practice to meet the challenge of change; (3) facilitating adaptation to industrial change via training and retraining; (4) improving initial and continuing training to facilitate vocational integration and reintegration into the labor market; (5) facilitating access to vocational training, and encouraging the mobility of trainers/trainees and young people; (6) stimulating cooperation on training between educational or training establishments and firms through work-related vocational training and apprenticeships; (7) developing exchanges of information and experience on issues common to Member States' training systems; and (8) future challenges for vocational training (the nature of change, the issues at stake, development of the acquis communautaire--body of European Community law). Appended are information about the sources of data used in the analysis and a time line of development of the acquis communautaire. (Contains 40 references and 56 graphs/tables.) (MN)