Over the past ten years, in Europe, "Lifelong learning" (LLL) has gradually become a main reference of political discourse on reforms in education, vocational training, qualification and skills. Promoted to the rank of primary orientation towards the implementation of both "European employment strategy” and “Lisbon strategy”, the emergence of this political orientation is due to several factors : 1. the failures of previous national VET policies 2. the influence of both neo-liberal (like the British NVQs) and social-democrat programmes (like the Danish VET systems linked to the flexi-security). The European policy on LLL has three strategic goals – improving quality and effectiveness of education and training, ‘opening up to the wider world' and democratisation (promoting active citizenship, equal opportunities and social cohesion). We advance the hypothesis that LLL policy becomes a major component of social policies, since they are "active" rather than "passive" preventive rather than remedial. These objectives could be interpreted and applied in various ways. The resolution adopted by the European Council held in Brussels in 2003 - "different systems, common goals" - reflects the need to accommodate the diversity of national systems. The paper would like to show that there are five Ideal-typical LLL regimes, each affecting a particular role to vocational education and training. These regimes are built around the responses to a series of political stakes like “Who assumes the responsibilities for qualification- and employment-related risks (unemployment, precariousness, obsolescence of skills, etc...) ? Each national system is a societal compromise or hybridisation between two or more typical regimes but one is dominant. We will apply this approach to different countries like Denmark, France, Germany, UK, Sweden.