home > News > 2005 > Campus Europae meets European Parliamentarians

News

10.07.2005

Campus Europae meets European Parliamentarians

In July and September the Secretary General met with Lissy Gröner (ESP), Doris Pack (EPP) and Helga Truepel (Green), who are members of the Committee of Education of the European Parliament. During these meetings fruitful discussions on the “proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an integrated action programme in the field of lifelong learning” have took place. Mrs Pack is the rapporteur of the Committee and Mrs. Truepel is the vice-chair of the committee on Culture and Education. The main points of the new programme are: - to integrate the existing programmes (Grundtwig, Comenius, Erasmus, etc) into one programme - to increase the number of pupils, students and teachers that take part in the exchange - to increase the grants for students from 150 € to 250 € per month. Some of the parliamentarians proposed an increase to 350 €. While supporting these proposals the Secretary General also pitched the proposition that the new integrated programme should encourage and support experimental actions that aim to further develop the already existing mobility mechanisms. This is in line with the proposals made by Campus Europae in the “Equal access to student exchange by co-financing” paper (Limerick, June 2005), where some innovative ideas of how to enhance “European employability” are detailed. At the meeting of the Committee at the 11th and 12th of September the amendments to the proposal of the EU-Commission which have been discussed with the EU-Parliamentarians have been accepted. After the discussions in the Committee of Culture and Education the proposal will be negotiated between the Council, the Commission and the Parliament. A final decision is expected to be made along with the decisions about the EU-budget, and by that time it will be made clearer if CE may or not benefit from financial support within the framework of the next integrated programme.