and placements in Europe. And we can continue to question the importance of experience abroad for apprentices and other young people in IVET, who often work in small and medium-sized enterprises with a regional focus. However. the reality is that experience of mobility provides apprentices and IVET students with particular competences over and above those obtained from the vocational curriculum including communicative, social, meaning-related and change-related skills. These critical competences benefit the individual apprentice and IVET student personally and they are also likely to make them more employable. Within this discourse, the rationale for the activity lies in the use of placements abroad as a didactic tool to equip participants with so called “key skills” that enable them to cope with the constant changes in occupational profiles, work organization and career paths arising as a consequence of globalization and technological change. This corresponds to a focus on education and training as a motor for economic growth, and the aims of the Lisbon-declaration concerning the creation of a ’Europe of knowledge’. Placements abroad can be an activity linked to internationalization of education and training in Europe. In this case they are the response of national educational systems to the perceived negative effects of globalization. At the level of the individual, it enables the future workforce to acquire foreign language skills and intercultural skills so that they can deal with increased foreign contacts at the workplace. At systemic level, it allows national educational systems to fill in temporary gaps in training provision by sending trainees abroad to where such opportunities exist. Increasingly, employees from all levels need to be able to operate in an environment that deals with international customers and suppliers. Those companies and sectors who earn their money abroad, or work with foreign suppliers, are more likely to be engaged in mobility. Although right now less than 50% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are internationalized, figures by the World Trade Organization, show that more and more economies are dependent on external and foreign trade. It is likely that this will increase the pressure on employers to hire people with a ‘worldly mindset’. In the best tradition of ‘Master craftsmen’ who only got their credentials after having been abroad, sectors can use this changing environment to train their future employees. To facilitate knowledge-transfer between sectors, economies and generations, education should continue to play its role here. Placements abroad can be