Civic education in the European countries

There is an ongoing renewal of interest in civic education (CE) in many developed countries with democratic constitutions. In this regard, school is viewed, and CE in particular, as a key element in the process of political socialization of a democratic citizen. This paper, in its first part, gives an overview of policy and state-of-theart of CE in the EU countries. In the second part, it refers to results of a research project in Croatia, which focuses on comparative analysis of national curricula in compulsory schools in eleven European countries. Furthermore, it discusses the questionable impact of CE on pupils. In its third and closing part, the author, in addition to summarizing the established facts on policies and curricular aspects of CE, reflects on the importance of extra-curricular aspects of CE, and also on the relationships between CE and history teaching in view of the emergence of the contemporary multicultural Europe.