EN
The author discusses the issue of functional illiteracy in the present. With reference to empirical studies conducted in England, France and Germany in the last decade, shows the scale of the phenomenon, which demands action by the political and educational systems, including the professionalization of specialists teaching adults to read and write. In the European Union there are already examples of good practices, but still there is a large variation resulting from among others the importance of the problem of illiteracy, or in different words – deficits in reading and writing, in individual countries. The phenomenon of illiteracy in the European Union can be neither denied nor ignored. Adult literacy as a specialization within the academic education of teachers exists in some universities; in the future it will be probably included in the canon of academic education.