In the high-tech 21st-century society in which we live, literacy has become more essential than ever before. This raises the importance and urgency of ensuring that Europeans acquire effective reading and writing skills from an early age. Despite the EU’s high standards of education, some young people fall through the literacy net for a diversity of complex reasons. The effects of this can be profound and will impact the rest of a young person’s life and have implications for his or her family and society as a whole.

Although Europe has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, adult illiteracy still persists but the subject is something of a taboo, while the implications of low literacy for the individual and society are often ignored. As a result, people struggling with reading and writing often feel isolated and ashamed, and may try to hide their problem from employers and even their families. The EU is working to break the taboo and bring the issue out into the open in order to empower adults with literacy problems to tackle them and discover the power of the written word.