ERASMUS PROGRAMME
The ERASMUS programme was launched in June 1987 and is one of the best-known Community actions, encouraging student and teacher mobility, and promoting transnational cooperation projects among universities across Europe.
The scheme currently covers nine out of every ten European higher education establishments. It was named after Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), who was a Dutch humanist and theologian.
Inspired by a mobility tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages, the Erasmus action and its different activities fit into the mobility policy promoted by the Bologna Process, which aims at the creation of a European Higher Education Area by 2010.
The programme is open to the participation of 31 countries: the 27 Member States of the European Union; the 3 European Economic Area countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and the candidate country Turkey.
ERASMUS has developed beyond just being an educational programme. It gives many European university students the chance of living for the first time in a foreign country. Over 1.5 million students have so far benefited from Erasmus grants, and the European Commission hopes to reach a total of 3 million by 2012.
SOCRATES/ERASMUS PROGRAMME
The SOCRATES/ERASMUS programme seeks to integrate the ‘physical mobility’, mainly of students, into a wider framework of cooperation activities which aim at developing a “European Dimension”“ within the entire range of academic programmes.
“Bringing students to Europe, bringing Europe to all students” is the new spirit of ERASMUS: while student mobility retains a position of central importance within the programme, stronger incentives are now available to encourage universities to add a European perspective to the courses followed by students who do not participate directly in mobility.