The importance of a highly skilled workforce has become increasingly relevant in the context of the European Union new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - Europe 2020. At the individual level, a good education is increasingly decisive for employment prospects and earnings levels. Hence, education and training systems must generate new skills, to respond to the nature of the new jobs, which are expected to be created, as well as to improve the adaptability and employability of adults already in the labour force. This publication attempts to address these issues. The first part uses harmonised data from recent European surveys on continuing training to assemble a set of stylised facts concerning the distribution of training across 28 European countries. Part 2 examines some of these issues in greater depth. Estimates of the individual probabilities of training based on microdata are constructed.