Brussels, 26/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - More than one million people have already taken part in the Erasmus+ education, training, youth and sport programme, according to a report published by the European Commission on Tuesday 26 January. These “preliminary” results were published at the same time as two other reports on the Erasmus exchange programme: one on student and staff mobility numbers in the 2013-2014 academic year and the other on the regional impact of mobility.
The Erasmus+ programme replaces the programmes for life-long education and training (Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Comenius and Grundtvig), the Youth in Action programmes, Erasmus Mundus, Tempus, Alfa and Edulink, and the higher education cooperation programme with industrialised countries. It has a budget of €14.7 billion over its seven-year life cycle (2014-2020).
Generalities. The Commission states that the Erasmus+ programme provided funding of €2 billion for 18,000 projects in 2014. It supported 650,000 mobility grants for students, trainees, teachers, volunteers and other young people. It also provided funding opportunities for over 1,700 cooperation projects across the education, training and youth sectors, addressing key challenges such as early school leaving, the need to equip young generations with digital skills, and promoting tolerance and intercultural dialogue. Some caution needs to be applied, however: in its pages, the report makes clear that these are “preliminary results”. Most of the Erasmus projects that started in 2014 still have some way to run insofar as the average duration of projects is between 18 months and 2 years. It is, therefore, too early to give a qualitative assessment of the impact of the new programme, the reports says, adding that its effect is, however, already being felt.
Little information on loans. The Commission report notes, too, a certain slowness on Master degree loans and international cooperation (both scheduled for 2015). Loan guarantees are one of the main innovations of the Erasmus + programme: thanks to agreements negotiated with the European investment fund, they should make it easier for Masters students to access private loans, allowing them to study abroad. They were supposed to have been introduced in 2014 (the year on which the report focuses) but were delayed until 2015. When questioned by EUROPE, the Commission said that, at present, the instrument was operating only in Spain. “The MicroBank in Spain is the only one to have signed an agreement in June 2015. The system is, then, in place and is working. The Banque Populaire is preparing to offer loans from spring 2016. Each of these schemes will provide in total up to €30 million in loans to students preparing their Masters degree abroad. Furthermore, Diakhitel, the Hungarian student loans agency, is preparing to join the scheme in time for next academic year, 2016-2017. Banks in several countries have also expressed interest in providing Erasmus+ loans in future” said a source close to the matter.
Exchanges before 2014. In a separate report, the Commission has published the statistics on student and staff mobility for the last academic year of the old Erasmus programme for higher education. It shows that 272,000 students and 57,000 staff took part in the exchange scheme in the course of academic year 2013-2014 - record numbers for the programme, even though student exchange numbers fell in 11 countries (mainly Estonia, Bulgaria and Hungary).
In a third report, the Commission again highlights the positive effects on jobs of exchange programmes, especially for students from Southern and Eastern Europe. “Students from Eastern Europe are 83% less likely to experience long-term unemployment if they have taken part in Erasmus”, the report states. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)