Very interesting question!

In my opinion, The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages represents a major accomplishment: it is a well-recognized source of agreement to develop standards, indicators and tests for curricula. 

Nevertheless, it has not really achieved the aim of being a full reference for multilingualism and interculturality (Chapter 8 of the Framework), nor an inspirational horizon for policy makers. 

It was also supposed to be an initial starting point for the European Language Portfolio (ELP, developed by the Language Policy Unit of the Council of Europe), but language portfolios never spread among schools in the expected way.

I have been doing training for teachers on the CEFR and the ELP during the last 15 years, and the teachers' reasons for not engaging with them are, mainly:

-These two documents are too accademic and not performance oriented.

-Their adoption by schools depends on the participation of everybody (teamwork is a weak spot for teachers).

-Not enought training has been organized, nor has on-line interactive help been provided.

I hope it helps! :-)

@NewsNeus

It gives language teacher a framework to work with. The framework as serves as a model to emulate should one choose to have a different scheme.

If one choose to top the framework, there is a benchmark to surpass hence it sets a standard for both followers and sceptics.

At the very least the framework defines the criteria-based assessment justly.

Thank you both for your views, much appreciated.

@Neus - I fully agree with you, but sometimes teachers should be more proactive, and complain less. In my experience, it is common to hear them complain about their wages in comparison to their workload. Also, many textbooks today include lesson plans - or ideas for that - in compliance with the CEFR, therefore I think that the CEFR guidelines are 'unintentionally' applied by teachers during their lessons - once the final objectives are defined.

If CEFR has been important as far as the determination of levels of proficiency is concerned, it has nevertheless been too detailed to be of practical help for language teachers at classroom level. If one agrees that it has been 'coherent and transparent' it has been too 'comprehensive'. In my country, Algeria, it is used but only by a minority as a way to be compared internationally and provide students with a more legible technique to define their proficiency scales and get rid of the obsolete beginner, advance and intermediate grid.

Still, the CEFR has not prevented interpretations to be too diverse if not contradictory. Having said that, it still provides a better way of dividing students into more homogenised groups according to levels of proficiency but also their learning needs.

To borrow Widdowson’s (2015: 359 - JELF) words, the specifications of the CEFR never question “the old orthodoxy that the objective of learning can only be the acquisition of competence defined as conformity to native speaker norms”.  Baker (2015: 135 - Lang. Teach.), for example, quotes the following specification among many similar ones: “Can sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritating them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker” (Council of Europe 2001: 122).  It may be argued that such specifications make it difficult to prepare students for real-world international and intercultural communication in a multilingual setting.

Interesting question for me. The CEFR is a very influential document in this century in terms of modern language teaching, but it is of much controversy as well (see e.g. Alderson 2007, Hulstijn 2014) . I studied the adoption of the CEFR in Vietnam (see Nguyen and Obaid, 2015) and found out that only the CEFR common reference levels were quickly adopted to overhaul current troubled testing and assessment practice and calibrate it to a presumably international standard. The CEFR meticulous can-do statements and self-assessment toolkit have never been translated effectively into classroom activities, and of course not an issue of concern for policymakers. I'm afraid that a reduced interpretation of the CEFR has enabled giant testing companies and textbook publishers to claim an invalidated CEFR alignment and thus promote a profit-oriented agenda of CEFR adoption wordwide at the expense of learners and teachers' professional practices, not only in developing countries' context, but in Europe as well. 

Thank you all, very interesting points.

In terms of teaching, my feeling is that the CEFR has never been practically applied to the classroom for all the above reasons. Fortunately, good coursebooks exist, and these generally comply with the CEFR statements. In my view, the point is: are these coursebooks really effective and efficient when brought to the classroom? We are all aware of the difficulties with teaching when a class is full of learners with different levels of English (or other languages). I'm glad to share my opinions with all of you. Thanks.

According to my viewpoint, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages plays the greatest role in today's world. It facilitates a successful second language acquisition, especially  in those cases  when the teachers and lecturers have to deal with the students with different backgrounds.  This fact is very important in today's globalizing world, which presents the aspiration towards learning lingva franca.

Thank you all.

@Irina - Dear irina, according to your statement "especially in those cases when the teachers and lecturers have to deal with the students with different backgrounds", how would you manage a class of 25/30 learners with a different background and different levels of English (or other languages)? (That's just the Italian scenario!)

I was thinking to myself that teachers are recommended to comply with their national curriculum each year, so if the objective for that year is to achieve a B2 level, it would be extremely tough to work with a variety of learners with A1, A2, B1 levels... Students' learning skills are definitely patchy even in the same class. How could we attain to CEFR guidelines?

Hope it makes sense?

Thank you.

Thank you all for your precious contributions. Very much appreciated!

I think this is a very important question.  The CEFR is becoming more and more influential globally and so in that sense can be seen as very successful.  However, I think (as Tomokazu has already indicated!) that this is very problematic for a number of reasons.  Firstly, as some of these answers have noted, it is not applicable in all the contexts in which it is now being applied.  It was originally designed for language learning in Europe and its relevance to other setting is highly questionable (Nguyen's answer was very interesting in this respect).  Secondly, it is based around a rather dated model of language and communication in which 'native like' competence is seen as the end goal.  This is not really appropriate in multilingual and multicultural settings and especially so in relation to English which is now most commonly used as a lingua franca rather than a native language. Closely related to this is the reified perspective of linguistic competence (as opposed to intercultural, pragmatic and interactional competence) that is given prominence. This, in my view, is not a very accurate 'measure' of successful L2 use.