The EU Commission DG EAC “Mind the Gap: Education Inequality across EU Regions” Sep. 2012 stresses that major geographic disparities persist in educational opportunities and outcomes, across and within EU regions. The report highlights “big regional disparities in terms of educational opportunities and achievements in the EU”. The “Renewed EU agenda for Learning” requires to move towards evidence-based policies. In the EU, the regional level is responsible for education and training and it is at regional level that decisions are taken and put into practice (Committee of Regions). There is an immediate need to overcome such regional disparities by supporting evidence-based policy making at regional level to empower the EU to reach EU2020 strategic objectives and targets. Local authorities are at the forefront of policy formulation, implementation and monitoring in the field of education and training. It is at local level that the decisions are taken and EU policies turned into action, i.e. educational and training programmes and interventions. In addition, the regional and local authorities represent the closest-to-the citizen public authority and thus have considerable capacity to re-direct citizens towards education and training. While policies and strategies for education and training are defined at EU and Member State levels, the local authorities are the ones to implement programmes, monitor and feed into the strategy formulation process. Local authorities seldom exchange knowledge and expertise on how the qualitative development of suitable VET initiatives. At present there are no formal and structured mechanisms for inter-regional and cross-border (i.e. across EU countries) cooperation in the field of VET. The Erasmus+ Programme Guide, pag 95, defines the priorities for the Strategic Partnership projects: priority 5 calls for strategic partnership to “promote[ing] structured inter-regional and cross-border cooperation: enhancing the commitment of local and regional public authorities in the qualitative development of the education, training and youth fields”. Against this background, CLAVET aims at developing a platform for structured cooperation among local authorities for the qualitative development of education an d training initiatives with the overall objective of overcoming geographical and border barriers and the aim of realizing the EU education and training area. The CLAVET platform will become a point of reference for local authorities in the formulation and implementation of education and training initiatives: the platform will consolidate knowledge, experiences and expertise from the various participating local authorities and become a knowledge hub and meeting point for local policy makers in the domain of education and training. In addition to exchanging best practices, the community of participants will allow to build a Rapid Response Mechanism for local policy makers. As such, CLAVET is devoted to the target group identified in the local policy makers involved in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of education and training policies and programmes. The partnership brings together local authorities at various levels of governance, third sector, academia and the private sector to build cross-sectoral synergies for the realisation of a truly European project: 10 partners, 8 countries, 8 languages plus English as the common working language of the Partnership, 5 local authorities. Such Partnership represents the diversity of policy and programmatic approaches on education and training across the EU and Erasmus+ area. Additional 4 countries and 21 local authorities are represented in the CLAVET partnership by a EuroRegion. The sustainability and impact of the project is guaranteed by the goal of establishing a permanent network for structured inter-regional and cross-border cooperation across Europe for enhanced qualitative development of education and training at local and territorial level. The CLAVET platform is instrumental for the establishment and operation of this network: partners will define the clear structure of the network and all the relevant details for increased participation, such as MoUs, internal guidelines, terms of use, etc. The partnership will also develop content and training material to empower local policy makers in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of education and training policies and programmes. The CLAVET Fiches will be available in 9 languages and will capture best practices, lessons learned and practical examples of policy and programmes for education and training in the diverse regions of Europe. Such wealth of knowledge, training content and policy tools will be made widely and freely available through the CLAVET Open Educational Resources to widen and deepen the impact of the project also beyond the cofinancing of Erasmus+.