Mathematical competences: struggling for a definition.

The notion of competence is becoming more and more a central notion in education: it is used by policy makers with the aim of triggering and informing curriculum reforms. Therefore, the teachers are asked to design and carry on educational activities and to assess students focusing on the development of competences. We raise the problem of identification and definition of mathematical competence. In this developmental paper we show our reflections on the complexity of the idea of competence taking into account how it is presented in the European institutional documents and in some educational studies that deal with this topic