Overwegingen bij COM(2025)549 - Erasmus+ programme for the period 2028-2034 - Hoofdinhoud
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| dossier | COM(2025)549 - Erasmus+ programme for the period 2028-2034. |
|---|---|
| document | COM(2025)549  |
| datum | 16 juli 2025 |
The Union is a community of values rooted in Europe's history and identity and anchored in the Treaty on the EU. Understanding those values, including fundamental rights and democracy, is an essential life skill and key to participation in the political debate and decision making. Education and training, youth and sport activities help equip citizens with the skills and competences to thrive, actively and meaningfully participate in democratic life and in the society overall, and help people connect around and defend shared values.
The Union is built on solidarity, both among its citizens and among the Member States. That universal value guides the actions of the Union and provides the unity necessary to cope with societal challenges, which individuals are willing to help address in practice, notably through volunteering.
It is essential that all people, irrespective of their personal, social, economic or cultural background, have the opportunity to participate in a mobility experience abroad from an early age, when values and attitudes are formed and when individuals are most receptive to new experiences and influences. Early exposure to different environments, cultures, languages and ways of life can help to break down stereotypes, promote intercultural understanding, and instil values of respect, tolerance and solidarity, thereby contributing to a more united and harmonious Europe.
Building inclusive, cohesive and resilient societies, and sustaining the competitiveness of the Union requires investing in learning opportunities for all, regardless of background and means, in cooperation between Member States and organisations active in the field, and in innovative policy development in the fields of education and training, youth and sport. Such an investment also contributes to strengthening European identity, fundamental rights and values and a more democratic Union.
In line with the EU Preparedness Union Strategy 37 , preparedness, resilience, participation in democratic life and civic engagement should be fostered through a bottom-up approach, encouraging organisations and institutions to play a key role in fostering digital and media literacy, critical thinking, promoting civic engagement, and learning about democracy and citizenship. People and communities across the EU must engage actively to prevent crises and to be sufficiently prepared to respond to them.
Common areas of action and objectives between the 2021-2027 European Solidarity Corps and Erasmus+ programmes highlight the potential for enhanced synergy and regulatory coherence. Bringing all learning mobility, volunteering, cooperation and active citizenship opportunities together provides a single-entry point to all opportunities offered by the Union for young people and organisations active in the field of youth, allowing for a more coordinated and effective approach, and easier access for potential participants and beneficiaries.
In this context, it is necessary to establish Erasmus+ 2028-2034, the Union Programme for education and training and also in the fields of youth and sport (the ‘Programme’), as the successor to the 2021-2027 Erasmus+ 38 and European Solidarity Corps 39 Programmes, which encompasses actions in the field of education and training, youth and sport and sets up the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps.
In a rapidly changing economic, social and geopolitical environment, experience has shown the need for a more flexible multiannual financial framework and Union spending programmes. To that effect, and in line with the objectives of the Erasmus+ programme, the funding should duly consider the evolving policy needs and Union’s priorities as identified in relevant documents published by the Commission, in Council conclusions and European Parliament resolutions, while ensuring sufficient predictability for the budget implementation.
The Programme should support the implementation of the Union of Skills 40 and the overall strategic frameworks for Union policy cooperation in the fields of education and training, including the policy agendas for school education, higher education, vocational education and training and adult learning, including up-skilling and re-skilling, to allow citizens to develop competences and skills at all stages of their life to thrive in society.
In line with the EU Youth Strategy 41 , the European Youth Work Agenda 42 and the 2024 Communication on the legacy of the European Year of Youth 2022 43 , the Programme should support meaningful participation of young people and youth organisations in decision and policy making, youth mainstreaming across policy fields, the validation of non-formal and informal learning, high-quality youth work and competence development of youth workers. The programme will continue to support all young people to participate in learning mobility and non-formal learning mobility, including youth exchanges and youth participation activities, with the objective to engage and empower young people to acquire and develop competences for life and their professional future, to become active citizens and participate in economic, social, cultural, democratic and political life, and to connect them to the European project and contribute to building an inclusive, competitive and resilient Union.
The Programme should support participation in sport and physical activity for all, in line with the EU Work Plan for Sport 2024-2027 44 . Therefore, there is a need to focus, in particular, on grassroots sport, taking into account the important role that sport plays in promoting healthy lifestyles, interpersonal relations, social inclusion and equality as well as building cohesive communities.
Digital transformation has changed society and the economy with an ever-deepening impact on everyday life and demonstrated the need for higher levels of digital readiness and capacity of education and training as well as the pressing need for digital skills development for all across the Union.
Formal, informal and non-formal learning play an essential role in addressing climate change, raising awareness and instilling the skills and key competences needed for changing personal behaviours. The Programme will help empowering people to act in their respective communities and build up the needed skills for a successful clean transition, in line with the Clean Industrial Deal.
The international dimension of the Programme should aim to offer opportunities for learning mobility, cooperation and policy dialogue with third countries not associated to the Programme, building on the experience of predecessor programmes, including to contribute to competitiveness of the Union, while ensuring protection of the Union’s economic security interests. To increase the impact of those activities, it is important to enhance synergies between the Programme and Global Europe, taking into account the enlargement of the Union, the Global Gateway Strategy and the education and training, youth and sport policy frameworks.
The Programme should bring candidate countries and potential candidates closer to their goal of acceding to the Union. The Programme should promote stability, partnerships and skills development, with countries in the wider neighbourhood including by enhancing ties with the Mediterranean region. Through cooperation with other countries across the globe, the Programme should as well attract talents worldwide, and shape partnerships notably to promote competitiveness of the Union. The Programme should support countries in modernising their institutions and organisations and, more generally, enhancing the quality and inclusiveness of education, training, youth and sport through international partnerships.
The implementation of the Programme should be guided by the principles and values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law, and solidarity, as respectively enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union and referred to in the preamble of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It is thus essential that all parties involved in the Programme respect those principles and values. The Programme should as well respect the principles set out in the 2017 EU Guidelines for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child and in Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as the Union of Equality strategies.
The Programme should encourage participation, in particular of young people, in Europe’s democratic life, including by supporting activities that contribute to citizenship education, nurture skills needed for civic engagement and enable to engage and learn to participate in civic society, thereby raising awareness of European common values, including fundamental rights, facilitating interaction with decision-makers at local, national and European levels and contributing to the process of European integration. The Programme should also support the creation of opportunities and mechanisms for meaningful youth participation.
The Programme should offer accessible, inclusive and safe opportunities for young people and organisations to show solidarity, helping them support communities and address societal challenges, while gaining valuable experience and skills for their personal growth and employability.
Volunteering, both within and beyond the Union, constitutes a rich experience in a non-formal and informal learning context, enabling young people to show solidarity and engage in activities contributing to address societal and humanitarian challenges while enhancing their personal, socio-educational and professional development, active citizenship, civic participation and employability. The Programme should thus also support “European Solidarity Corps” volunteering actions, including the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps. Those actions were covered under the European Solidarity Corps programme in the 2021-2027 programming period.
With a view to enhancing the promotion of solidarity and the visibility of humanitarian aid and development cooperation among European citizens, there is a need to develop solidarity of Member States and third countries associated to the programme with third countries not associated affected by disasters from natural hazards and human-induced risks. The European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps should contribute to a coordinated Union needs-based response and will be implemented in accordance with the rules and procedures laid down in this Regulation.
Young people, in particular those with fewer opportunities, should continue to be given the chance to have a first time, experience travelling throughout Europe as part of an informal and non-formal educational activity that aims to foster their sense of belonging to the Union and to enable them to discover its cultural and linguistic diversity.
In the field of sport, through mobility opportunities and capacity building, including cooperation, the Programme should foster common European values, volunteering as well as innovation and skills development in and through sport. The Programme should also promote good governance, safety and integrity in sport, sport diplomacy, support grassroots sports organisations, as well as offer young people across Europe the opportunity to participate in cross-border sports initiatives, fostering personal growth, cultural exchange, solidarity and community engagement.
The Programme brings a key contribution to the Union of Skills and the European Education Area, laying the foundation to skills and competences formation throughout life and providing a genuine common space for quality education and lifelong learning across borders. The Union of skills aims to step up the efforts to achieve high quality education, training, and lifelong learning through delivering basic and advanced skills, providing opportunities for people to update regularly and acquire new and future-oriented skills, facilitating skills circulation and recruitment by businesses across the EU, and attracting, developing and retaining top talent in Europe. In line with the Union of Skills, the Programme should also reflect the importance of entrepreneurship education and financial literacy.
It is important to stimulate and widen access to learning, teaching and research on EU, values and citizenship. Fostering a European sense of belonging and commitment is particularly important given the challenges faced today by the Union. The Programme should continue to contribute to learning on European integration matters, including the Union’s future challenges and opportunities, to promote debate on those matters and the development of excellence in European integration studies.
The learning of languages contributes to mutual understanding between people and cultures, and fosters mobility within and outside the Union, as language competences are essential life and job skills. Therefore, the Programme should enhance the learning of languages, including, where relevant, national sign languages. To ensure broad and inclusive access to the Programme, it is important that multilingualism be a key principle in the implementation of the Programme.
Europe faces a growing challenge in meeting the demand for skilled talent in strategic and evolving sectors like clean and circular technologies, transport, energy, water resilience, healthcare, digital technologies, aerospace and defence. To address this key need, it is essential to develop, attract and retain talented individuals in these fields. In line with the Union of skills, the Programme should among other support EU students to pursue studies in such critical sectors and attract as well top talent to Europe by enhancing the attractiveness of education and training and offering scholarships to students, including through Erasmus Mundus scholarships. This would contribute to address the skills needs for the labour market, including for sectors suffering severe staff shortages.
Cooperation enables exchange of practices and capacity building and thereby leads to better outcomes and performance as well as efficiency gains by pooling resources and knowledge. The Programme should therefore support capacity building measures that enhance cooperation at different levels between institutions and organisations that are active in the fields of education and training, youth and sport. This recognises the fundamental role of institutions and organisations in equipping individuals with the knowledge, skills and competences needed in a changing world and helping institutions and organisations active in the field to adequately fulfil their potential for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, in particular within the digital economy.
The Programme should support long-term strategic cooperation at institutional level to build excellence, competitiveness and attractiveness and generate sustainable and systemic transformation of education and training, youth and sport organisations and institutions, in line with the EU’s priorities, including by acting as testbeds for innovative education, training and skills development instruments, supporting cooperation with business and industry. The Programme should continue to support the work of education and training institutions and Member States towards removing remaining barriers to transnational cooperation and multiplying the offer of transnational joint study programmes, contributing towards a joint European Degree 45 .
The Programme should support the core education mission of the European Universities Alliances to enable systemic impact achieved more efficiently through long-term Union level action, notably to reinforce excellence, reduce fragmentation and increase the attractiveness and inclusiveness of EU higher education systems, develop innovative instruments to increase quality of learning and teaching, develop future oriented skills and competences (such as AI, cybersecurity, sustainability, STEM), including the sectors already identified in the Union of Skills, through relevant and future-proof curricula, pedagogical innovation, joint degrees, lifelong learning, micro-credentials, to nurture and attract talent and facilitate transnational cooperation in education, including with business and industry.
In line with relevant Union frameworks and tools, the Programme should contribute to the development and circulation of skills, including by setting up a basic skills support scheme and fostering quality assurance, transparency, the recognition of skills, competences and qualifications, their digitalisation, and the validation of non-formal and informal learning, skills management and guidance. In that regard, the Programme should also provide support to contact points and networks at national, and European level that facilitate cross-European exchanges and beyond, and the development of flexible learning pathways between different fields of education and training and youth and across formal and non-formal settings, including through the support of micro-credentials’ eco-systems.
User-friendly online platforms and tools for virtual cooperation can play an important role in supporting the delivery of education and training and youth policy in Europe and beyond. To increase the use of virtual cooperation activities, the Programme should support more systematic and coherent use of online platforms. It should as well facilitate and support mobility processes through digitalisation.
The Programme should be designed to promote inclusion, diversity and equal opportunities by widening access to mobility, volunteering and learning across the Union and beyond, thereby enabling all people to fully benefit from a transformative experience.
The Programme should provide for a set of measures to facilitate and increase the access for people with fewer opportunities, to remove the obstacles that may prevent such access, including financial ones, and to serve as a basis for further implementation guidance. Those measures include, among other, targeted financial support, accessible learning formats, housing support, preparatory activities and support for participants with fewer opportunities before, during and after their participation within the Programme, user-friendly and accessible documents available in different languages, support activities for staff dealing specifically with inclusion and diversity in organisations and raising awareness activities among potential participants with fewer opportunities, including in rural and remote areas. In addition, the Programme should allow to give priority in the grant awarding process to quality projects that actively address the inclusion and involvement of participants with fewer opportunities.
In order to make the Programme more accessible for newcomer organisations and for organisations with smaller administrative capacity and to make the Programme more manageable for beneficiaries, the Programme should reinforce the measures to simplify procedures at all stages.
This Regulation lays down an indicative financial envelope for the Programme. For the purpose of this Regulation, current prices are calculated by applying a fixed 2% deflator.
In view of the diversity of the fields covered by the Programme, the ambition for youth and sport to contribute meaningfully to the Programme’s objectives and to reach its target groups, should be maintained.
Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 of the European Parliament and of the Council 46 applies to this Programme. It lays down the rules on the establishment and the implementation of the general budget of the Union, including the rules on grants, prizes, non-financial donations, procurement, indirect management, financial assistance, financial instruments, budgetary guarantees and protection of the financial interests of the Union.
In accordance with Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509, Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 883/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council 47 , Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 2988/95 48 , Council Regulation (Euratom, EC) No 2185/96 49 and Council Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 50 , the financial interests of the Union are to be protected through proportionate measures, including the prevention, detection, correction and investigation of irregularities and fraud, the recovery of funds lost, wrongly paid or incorrectly used and, where appropriate, the imposition of administrative sanctions. In particular, in accordance with Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 883/2013 and (EC, Euratom) No 2185/96 the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) may carry out investigations, including on-the-spot checks and inspections, with a view to establishing whether there has been fraud, corruption or any other illegal activity affecting the financial interests of the Union. In accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1939, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) may investigate and prosecute fraud and other illegal activities affecting the financial interests of the Union as provided for in Directive (EU) 2017/1371 of the European Parliament and of the Council 51 . In accordance with Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509, any person or entity receiving Union funds is to fully cooperate in the protection of the Union’s financial interests, to grant the necessary rights and access to the Commission, OLAF, EPPO and the European Court of Auditors and to ensure that any third parties involved in the implementation of Union funds grant equivalent rights.
In order to simplify requirements for beneficiaries, simplified cost options in the form of lump sums, unit costs and flat rates should be used to the maximum possible extent. Simplified cost options to support learning mobility under the Programme should take into account the living and subsistence costs in the host country. In accordance with national law, Member States should be encouraged to exempt those grants from any taxes and social levies; grants awarded to individuals by public or private legal entities should be treated in the same manner.
It is appropriate to ensure that the 2021-2027 Programmes are closed correctly, in particular as regards the continuation of multiannual arrangements for their management, such as the financing of technical and administrative assistance. As from 1 January 2028, the technical and administrative assistance should ensure, where necessary, the management of actions that have not been finalised under the 2021-2027 Programmes by 31 December 2027.
In line with Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the Programme should take into account the specific situation of the outermost regions referred to in that Article, including measures to facilitate their participation to the Programme.
Pursuant to Article 85 (1) of Council Decision (EU) 2021/1764 52 , persons and entities established in overseas countries and territories are eligible for funding under the Programme subject to the rules and objectives and to any specific arrangement applicable to the Member State to which the relevant overseas country or territory is linked.
The Programme is to be implemented in accordance with Regulation (EU) [XXX]* of the European Parliament and of the Council [Performance], which establishes the rules for the expenditure tracking and the performance framework for the budget, including rules for ensuring a uniform application of the principles of ‘do no significant harm’ and gender equality referred to in Article 33(2), points (d), and (f), of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 respectively, rules for monitoring and reporting on the performance of Union programmes and activities, rules for establishing a Union funding portal, rules for the evaluation of the programmes, as well as other horizontal provisions applicable to all Union programmes such as those on information, communication and visibility.
In view to optimise the added value, increase scale and impact of investments, synergies should be sought in particular between the Programme and other Union funding instruments, including through enabling mechanisms. The Programme should seek as well synergies that strengthen collaboration between education and the private sector.
The Programme should allow for full and partial association of third countries. The Programme should also support the participation of third countries that are not associated to the Programme where those countries are identified in the work programme, their participation contributes to achieve the objectives of the programme and is essential for the implementation of the action.
Appropriate and inclusive outreach, publicity of the opportunities supported by the Programme should be ensured at local, national and Union level and should take into account the main target groups of the Programme and, where relevant, a wide variety of other target groups. Furthermore, the Commission and the implementing bodies should facilitate the sharing of good practices and project results and gather feedback on the Programme.
The Programme should mobilise the potential of former participants in the Erasmus+ Programme and support related activities by encouraging them to promote the Programme.
Measures should be taken to streamline the management of the Programme and achieve economies of scale including by limiting and reducing the number of national agencies.
Regulations (EU) 2021/817 53 and (EU) 2021/888 54 should be repealed with effect from 1 January 2028.
In order to ensure continuity in providing support in the relevant policy area and to allow implementation to start from the beginning of the 2028-2034 MFF, this Regulation should enter into force on and apply from 1 January 2028.