European Commission calls for increase in student mobility

15 Jul 2009

The European Commission aims to increase student mobility within Europe. In an attempt to identify the most effective method of achieving this goal, all stakeholders are being invited to provide their input.

In 2006, 310,000 young people went abroad with the support of European programmes. This figure represents a mere 0.3% of all 16 to 29 year olds. Despite a significant number of(successful) European programmes in existence that aim to stimulate student mobility, these figures clearly underline the need for further improvement.
 

Necessity

Ján Figel, European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, explains the necessity of increasing student mobility as follows:

Learning mobility is good for individuals, for schools, universities and training institutions and for society at large. It helps build skills, language knowledge and intercultural competences, and enhances individuals' and organisations' ability to innovate and compete at the international level. We need to encourage mobility, so that going abroad to learn becomes the norm, and not the exception. This is important, as much for the strength and sustainability of the EU's economic recovery as it is for the social cohesion of Europe's societies in the 21st century.
 

Green paper

Last week the European Commission published a green paper on ‘Promoting the learning mobility of young people’. The green paper poses a number of important questions, such as: How do we convince more young people to go abroad? Which obstacles to mobility will have to be removed? How can the Commission, member states, regions, education and training institutes and NGOs work together to increase learning mobility?

Download the green paper (110 kB)
 

Input

The European Commission calls upon all stakeholders to provide input on the above issues. To this end, the Commission will publish a questionnaire on its website on 15 July. This questionnaire will remain online until 15 December.

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