The Best Investments in Europe's Future

Learning more abroad: The European Commission intends to double the number of people participating in the EU educational programmes. The "Erasmus for All" programme is to allow for up to five million people to receive part of their education abroad.

"Erasmus for All" is a new programme for education, training, youth and sport, that the European Commission proposed on 23 November 2011. Up to 5 million people, almost twice as many as now, could get the chance to study or train abroad with a grant from "Erasmus for All". Among them would be nearly 3 million higher education and vocational students. The seven-year "Erasmus for All" programme, which would have a total budget of 19 billion euros, is due to start in 2014.

"Investing in education and training is the best investment we can make in Europe's future," said Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. "Studying abroad boosts people's skills, personal development and adaptability, and makes them more employable. We want to ensure that many more people benefit from EU support for these opportunities. We also need to invest more to improve the quality of education and training at all levels so we are a match for the best in the world and so that we can deliver more jobs and higher growth."

The new programme would bring together all the current EU and international schemes for education, training, youth and sport, replacing seven existing programmes with one. "Erasmus for All" will support learning opportunities for individuals, institutional cooperation between institutions, organisations and businesses, and provide support for reforms in Member States to modernise their education and training systems. The Commission is proposing an increase of approximately 70 per cent compared to the current seven-year budget, which would allocate 19.5 billion euros to the new programme's funding period of 2014 to 2020.