Brussels, 21/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commissioner for Education and Culture, Viviane Reding, has invited 30 past and "present" Erasmus students to Brussels next week to celebrate the programme's millionth student. Current and former students come from all the countries taking part in the programme (15 Member States, three EEA countries and 12 candidate countries). At the moment the European council of Brussels is being held, these youngsters will meet the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, and the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on 24 October. On 25 October, 30 students will visit the European Parliament. The objective of Erasmus week (the programme includes the launching of the Erasmus Students Charter, published in EUROPE 16-17 September p 12) is to provide a launching pad for its ideas for improving the programme and building on its success, such as raising the programme's profile and the size of grants.
Ms Reding used the occasion to point out that her objective was to,"reach two million students by 2007 and three million in 2010", which would only be possible if Erasmus gained recognition as an effective programme from an increasing number of students and also "the number of grants be increased without cutting their value". In order to open up the universities internationally and create inter-university networks, Ms Reding urged the universities to invite or appoint more foreign staff and to expand distance learning via Internet and explained that by the end of the year, the Commission would launch an e-learning programme, whose aims would include helping schools with "electronic twinning" and universities with setting up virtual campuses. According to Ms Redding, for the universities to become internationally open in this way, they must "make an effort to improve the language teaching offered to students who want to try out the mobility option: inadequate linguistic preparation is today one of the obstacles to the development of Erasmus".