Erasmus+ Coalition Meeting

20 June 2018, Brussels

Present: Brikena Xhomaqi (LLLP), Andrew Todd (LLLP), Safi Sabuni (Eurodesk), Manuel Gil (YFJ), Raffaela Kihrer (EAEA), Alessandra Accogli (All Digital), Darius Fisouzkhah (EVBB), Giulia Bordi (CEV), Céline Guérin (EUF), Lucie Susova (Solidar), Janina Späth (DAAD), Kea Hoppe (EEE-YFU), Luis Miranda (EARLALL), Peter Hunor (WOSM), Pauline Boivin (LLLP), Angel Gudina (Don Bosco International)

Headlines

● Update about the Erasmus proposal & positions of the stakeholders ● Other updates (Joint contribution, LLLP meeting with DG EAC, etc)

*The Erasmus+ proposal was released on 30 May. Please see links below: Press release , regulation , annex , staff working document (main implementing actions ) and factsheet * Update about the Erasmus proposal & positions of the stakeholders

Andrew presented the infographics (from the EC factsheet ) to display the different allocation of budget

to each strand of the proposal. It has been noted that the diagrams only show where two thirds of the

budget go (mainly associated to sectors like youth, school, adult, VET, sport, etc.). The European

Commission must still clarify how the other part of the budget (7 billion) is foreseen to be allocated.

Many people are sceptical about the announced “tripling” of the number of participants because more

social inclusion means also more support for the beneficiaries. Some have fear that to make the tripling

possible, the programme will create shorter mobility schemes and virtual mobility schemes.

The novelties are:

● The new category for “youth participation” is actually like the “Youth in action programme” was,

so not so very new. It consists in small projects with small grants at local level and it can’t be in

transnational partnership. The issue raised here is how do we define “small”.

● The Centers for vocational for excellence: they will consist in clusters with different actors and

will be highly connected to regional smart specialisation strategies. Some participants noticed

that LLLP’s member the European Vocational Training Association (EVTA) lost its Operating

Grant under Erasmus+ while the CSO was implementing for years a project on Excellence in VET

and a quality label, an initiative that the EC has now taken up to run it itself.

● The EC announced a Pilot for workers’ mobility but a question remains unanswered: how much

will the budget be? The next question is who pays what? The company? The employer or the

employee?

● One year ago, Juncker launched the idea of mobility for local politicians (in the Reaching out to

citizens report, 2017). What happened to that proposition?

● LLLP is noting that the objectives in the 2013 proposals were more specific (e.g. development of

Key competences). In the new proposal, the objectives are large and vague, however it was

mentioned that the EC perhaps did it on purpose in order to leave more space for new ideas

during the negotiations.

● The removal of the “+” in the programme’s name makes everyone unhappy. Some rumours said

it’s more a question of IT and technical process with that character as such, but most

stakeholders are against. The EC position on it is that the programme is well mature and

consolidated and doesn’t need the + anymore. However, this might further affect the reputation

of the programme being solely a student mobility scheme.

● The budget for VET has increased while there is not enough demand for grants by VET learners.

The budget increase doesn’t make sense then unless accompanying measures and support

services are foreseen for the VET learners’ mobility. What’s new now is the international

dimension for VET, which was requested by VET CSOs.

The European Youth Forum position (by Manuel)

The EYF has been advocating for 15% of the budget to be allocated for the youth chapter. Why? Because

success rates are very low. But their share in the new proposal remains quite the same (around 10-11%),

so they were not satisfied with it.

DiscoverEU is part of the youth chapter. They are against, because there has been no pilot until now to

prove its usefulness but they are welcoming the experiment. They tried to register and they noticed it’s

only a questionnaire/quiz, so there’s no reason why the initiative would reach out more to

disadvantaged learners than the usual Erasmus suspects. Also, they rightly noted that traveling can be a

way to meet other culture as well as to be a way to reinforce the divide/inequalities of those who went

to travel and those who didn’t.

Manuel said the Youth Forum is happy about the youth initiative being back; and the fact that in the

Staff Working Document, it is stressed that student mobility must be combined with the students being

engaged with their local community. He says it is similar to the socialErasmus initiative led by ESN and

other partners. They are happy about the small-scale partnerships, but they want more funding for

building the capacity of youth organisations.

According to Manuel, the EU Value funds could be used to scale up projects. Finally, he would

recommend that the choice for centralisation and decentralisation should not based on actions but on

the organisations and scale of the project. This is the case for the solidarity corps.

Other stakeholders’ positions

Solidar’s main concern is inclusivity, in particular for VET learners. Many times, the funding for the

exchange doesn’t include the travel costs. Solidar has currently two projects with German members

about the mobility of vulnerable groups and they want to showcase their experience. They’re doing a

case study. What results from it is that there is a clear need for more support with the application

process.

Don Bosco said they are beneficiary of Erasmus+ grants with their schools, but they recognise the fact

that they benefit from a huge network, which is helping them to send pupils, students and to organise

the mobility. They noted, and it’s particularly true for pupils and VET learners, that parents don’t easily

let their children go on mobility if they don’t feel them being protected by the hosting organisation and

other stakeholders (like a family from the hosting country for students exchange, etc.)

To answer the inclusiveness comment, it has been mentioned in the proposal that there could be higher

grants, and those should be based either on the sending or hosting country. Some policy-makers

brought up to discussion the idea of linking the grant level with family revenue, but some are against

because of obvious bureaucratic issues. German representatives say the national agency could decide

themselves of the levels of the grants. Also, it is seen as a good idea that people can still do Erasmus

without getting the grant if they don’t need it or when a university doesn’t have budget anymore.

For the European Association of the Education of Adults (EAEA), the share of budget for adults is almost

the same (3% to 3.6%) while they heard that it would rather be 6-7% ( in some countries, the adult

population reaches 85% of the total population!). They wonder how adult education can have an impact

in that situation? They are not very happy as well with the narrowing down to the target group of

“low-skilled adults”, because it’s not always easy to define low-skilled (usually it is associated with low

formal education degree which doesn’t mean that one’s is low skilled!). Plus there is way more relevant

target groups for adult education. They would like more to be said in the proposal regarding the issue of

social inclusion and citizenship, the integration of migrants, and about old people. EAEA also said that

adult education providers do not have the resources to apply and even if success rates are good it is

always the same organisations applying. Also, what about adult learners’ mobility? EAEA wanted a

specific programme for adults and they noticed that this mobility will be open for companies (in a little

footnote in the Staff Working Document). They’re waiting to learn more about this possibility. Overall,

they have noticed that adult education seems now to only focus on education for the labour market

avoiding to tackle the issues highlighted in the Post-Paris Agenda. EAEA has started a campaign on social

media to target policy-makers.

The DAAD (German Agency for Higher Education) noticed that Higher Education’s share in the budget

has decreased. Norway and Switzerland are excluded from the pilot project for EU universities network,

which is a pity. They remark that there is no budget given for the international dimension of Erasmus.

The EC left a carte blanche for stakeholders to give more ideas in the proposal.

On the side of schools stakeholders, they are happy about pupil mobility and that it moved to KA1. But

they believe on long-term mobility for having a true impact on young learners. They advocate for

stronger partnerships between CSOs and schools, while for now the schemes are really restricted to

schools whereas they could be more open to CSOs. What’s happening in the reality is that, private

companies organise the mobility for the school, they are contracted by the national agencies because

the schools do not have the resources to do it themselves. In order to well implement the apprentice

mobility schemes, VET providers would need more information on whether the companies are good or

not.

Concluding remarks on Erasmus

● About the programmes’ general objectives: Member States said the programme is overload with

too many priorities and they want more focused objectives. There are two many initiatives going

to different direction. Policy-makers should also remind that one of Erasmus+ goal is also to

promote EU values and is not just about mobility. Brikena said they should use Erasmus for

implementing their initiatives like the Key competences. The promotion of values is in Article 2

of the Treaty but it was taken out of the proposal because the EC has foreseen other

programme on values.

● The EP continues to advocate for tripling the budget.

● The EP will draft its report in the autumn:

- Lead Committee CULT Rapporteur - Milan Zver (EPP) Shadow Rapporteurs - Krystyna Lybacka (S&D), María Teresa Gimenez Barbat (ALDE), Liadh Ni Riada (GUE/NGL), Jill Evans (Greens/EFA), Isabella Adinolfi (EFDD), Dominique Bilde (ENF)

- Committees for Opinions EMPL - Rapporteur: Emilian Pavel (S&D) DEVE - tbc BUDG - tbc

● At the EESC they don’t know who will do an opinion and if they will do it. The EC asked them to do an opinion on the European Education Area package. And the EC doesn’t know who to ask at the EESC for the opinion on Erasmus. They wanted it to be included in EEA opinion but EESC doesn’t. Tatjana Babrauskiene (Lithuanian Trade Union) is doing the opinion on the EEA. LLLP has good connection with her.

● It says in the Staff Working Document that Key Action 2 will be partly centralised and decentralised. According to the Coalition, big KA2 project should be funded at central level. To solve Belgium NAs’ issues in answering the high demand for funding from EU CSOs, the EC said they would give them more money than other NAs (10%). The Coalition do not think it will be enough to solve the issue or that it is the best solution. Don Bosco suggested to lobby the NAs stressing it is a lot of work for them to evaluate a lot of proposals when they can only fund limited ones.

● The EC want the proposal to be adopted by May 2019, which for many of us is unrealistic.

Other news from the Coalition

Joint contribution of Erasmus+ Coalition on the Future of Erasmus+ The updated Joint contribution has been published on LLLP website . The Coalition is exploring the

possibility to organise a big event at the European Parliament, with MEP Zver who is the Rapporteur of the Erasmus+ proposal, other MEPs and EU institutions representatives, but bringing as well actual stories from people who had issues with the programme.

LLLP meeting with Sofia Eriksson (Director of Erasmus programme at DG EAC) The EC representative asked LLLP what is the value of EU CSOs? How do we reach out to citizens in rural area? The EC said that we only reach out to people who benefited from the programme already and ask how are we planning to reach people outside our membership. DG EAC seems to be exploring the idea of giving OGs to local CSOs which could of course be detrimental to EU CSOs to a certain extent. During the meeting Sophia referred to Operating Grants instead as “project-based” agreements, which is unclear and potentially hints to the fact that OGs may be changed in the next programme to become more project-based which is problematic for many organisations receiving OGs. LLLP will meet again with DG EAC when it’s reaction to the proposal is finalised. Erasmusx10 Campaign YFJ provided an update on the social media campaign, which has proved especially successful on Instagram and helped to create a modest increase on the Change.org petition page. A full report and analytics will be available from mid-July and then decision will be taken on the next steps for the campaign’s social media presence. Although the budget negotiations are now starting with a doubling as a baseline, the ‘x10’ argument remains relevant due in view of the 10 key arguments included in the concept note, focusing on the substantial issues which need to be addressed - ‘x10’ can be understood as ‘x10 ambition’, ‘x10 inclusion’, etc. The statistics and details that LLLP has gathered for the campaign rationale will be used to feed into new communication materials/infographics to be launched in the autumn. It would be good to organise events/debates about the future of Erasmus+ at national level. The Italian Lombardy region representation in Brussels has expressed the possibility of organising such a debate in Italy. This would be a good strategy to raise the visibility of the campaign outside Brussels. Members of the Coalition are encouraged to assist the organisation of such events with their national members and National Agencies, which could be coordinated via the Coalition and the information shared on the campaign website. The campaign website now includes a page on sector-specific demands - a ‘transversal’ section will be added alongside the sectors already mentioned. The page will be updated once a month with new position papers/statements, which you can send to communication@lllplatform.eu .

Next steps - The next meeting of the Erasmus+ Coalition will take place in first week of September (date tbc) - LLLP is exploring the possibility to have the following meeting hosted in the European Parliament in October with MEPs and EC representatives. - Coalition coordinators LLLP and YFJ are meeting with MEPs to advocate for its Joint Contribution statement