30th Anniversary of The Erasmus Student Exchange Program

Chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier is in Lyon celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Erasmus student exchange program.

The Erasmus Programme is an EU exchange student programme that has been in existence since the late 1980's Its purpose is to provide foreign exchange options for students from within the European Union and it involves many of the best universities and seats of learning on the continent.

How does the Erasmas Program work?

The programme is aimed at cross-border cooperation between states to aid the growth of international studying, and with over 4000 students involved in the programme at any one time it offers an excellent chance of experience abroad

Erasmus Plus, is the new programme combining all the EU's current schemes for education, training, youth and sport, which was started in January 2014, is a new 14.7 billion euro catch-all framework programme for education, training, youth and sport. The new Erasmus+ programme combines all the EU's current schemes for education, training, youth and sport, including the Lifelong Learning Programme (Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Comenius, Grundtvig), Youth in Action and five international co-operation programmes (Erasmus Mundus, Tempus, Alfa, Edulink and the programme for co-operation with industrialised countries). The Erasmus+ regulation was signed on 11 December 2013.

There are currently more than 4,000 higher institutions participating in Erasmus across the 37 countries involved in the Erasmus programme and by 2013, 3 million students had taken part since the programme's inception in 1987. In 2012-13 alone, 270,000 took part, the most popular destinations being Spain, Germany, Italy and France. Erasmus students represented 5 percent of European graduates as of 2012.

Interested in the 2018 programme, click below. 

Image: Erasmus, scholar & theologian argued against 'Dogmatism'.