Brussels, 17/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - On 13 September, while in Yerevan (Armenia), Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, responsible for education, culture, youth and multilingualism, highlighted the new opportunities created by the new Erasmus+ programme in education, training, youth and sport for Eastern Partnership students who intend to do part of their advanced studies in a European Union university. Additional funding will be injected in order to support mobility. Vassiliou said: “Our existing Tempus and Erasmus Mundus programmes have been a great success since their launch in the Eastern Partnership region and I am delighted that we will be able to support even more student exchanges under Erasmus+. Quality education is fundamental to the prosperity and stability of our societies; without well-performing education systems, there can be neither growth nor development”.
The commissioner accompanied Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle and the deputy secretary general of the European External Action Service, Helga Schmid, to Armenia on the occasion of the third informal dialogue of the Eastern Partnership. On that occasion, Vassiliou met the education ministers of the Eastern Partnership countries in order to discuss questions of education and opportunities for enlarging partnership in the field of education. In the education sector, the Commission plans to make an annual allocation of €400 million for third-country partners for mobility opportunities and cooperation under Erasmus+. Capacity building projects, presently funded under the Tempus programme, will also receive additional funding from Erasmus+. Students from Eastern Partnership countries will, moreover, be able to benefit from scholarships for joint Master programmes. Doctoral fellowships will be financed under the renamed “Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions”, which are part of the new Horizon 2020 programme. Erasmus+ will replace seven existing mobility programmes including Erasmus Mundus and Tempus, and is due to be approved by the European Parliament and the Council later this autumn. It will be launched in January 2014 and is expected to have a total budget of around €14.5 billion. (IL/transl.jl)