The Lisbon European Council in March 2000 set the objective for the EU to become the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy and defined a strategy to reach this objective by 2010. It further stressed that education and training needed to play a key role in attaining this goal, and it therefore asked the Education Council to propose concrete measures, by "reflecting on the future concrete objectives of education and training systems, focusing on common concerns and priorities". This resulted in a report adopted by the Council on 12 February 2001, which identified 3 strategic objectives: improving the quality and effectiveness of education and training systems in the EU; facilitating the access of all to education and training systems; opening up education and training systems to the wider world.

In order to implement these three broad objectives, the EU Education Ministers and the Commission agreed on a Detailed Work Programme, which breaks down the 3 broad objectives into 13 related and more detailed objectives. In order to monitor progress towards the achievement of the 13 objectives the Commission set up working groups of experts covering one or more detailed objectives.

ACA won a competition for the provision of consultancy services to one of these working groups, responsible for mobility and European cooperation. ACA has assisted the working group by providing, compiling and analysing statistics on mobile students, teachers, trainees and trainers in Europe and between Europe and other countries as well as on the major EU and Member State-run exchange programmes; collecting data on success of mobility-facilitating recognition and transparency instruments in VET and LLL; reviewing quality assurance practices in education and training at national level as well as internationalisation of curricula and developing of suitable marketing approaches for European education and training products.