August 9, 2026

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The European Post

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New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya
August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Council Locks Partial Stance On Erasmus+ 40 Billion Next Cycle

Luka Modrić
Institutional Affairs Reporter, Culture and Education

Education ministers used their 11 May Council to lock in a partial general approach on the Erasmus+ regulation for 2028 to 2034, clearing the first political hurdle on a file that the Commission has built around a proposed €40.8 billion envelope. The agreement is described as partial for a specific reason: the financial allocation and the horizontal articles tying the programme to the next Multiannual Financial Framework have been carved out and parked inside the wider MFF talks. Ministers signed off on programme architecture, governance and scope, and left the cheque to a separate negotiating track.

The structural news is the merger. The Commission’s blueprint folds the European Solidarity Corps into Erasmus+, ending the parallel branding that has run since 2018 and consolidating volunteering, internships and humanitarian aid placements under one programme. Two pillars survive the consolidation — learning opportunities for individuals and capacity building for institutions — but the underlying line items absorb what was previously a separate €1 billion-class instrument. For national agencies, the practical effect is a single application architecture across mobility, training and youth solidarity from January 2028.

The governance changes are the part Council pushed hardest on. The Commission’s draft leaned on implementing acts and an internal steering structure; ministers reinstated the full programme committee that exists under the current cycle, restoring a forum where Member States can scrutinise annual work programmes and call points at draft stage rather than after publication. Several capitals — Sweden, Austria and Denmark among them — flagged opacity in the 2021-2027 cycle as the trigger for the change, particularly around the partnership strand and the European Universities alliances. The reinstated committee will not give Member States a veto on individual calls, but it widens the window for political intervention before money moves.

The numbers question is the harder one. The Commission’s €40.8 billion figure represents roughly a 50% nominal lift on the 2021-2027 envelope, but the headline depends on assumptions about how the European Solidarity Corps line is rolled in and how inflation indexation is treated. The European Committee of the Regions, which adopted two opinions at its 6 May plenary, has pushed Council and Parliament to defend the envelope in real terms and warned against using the consolidation as cover for a real-terms cut. The Committee’s intervention reflects the visible exposure of local and regional authorities, which co-deliver large portions of vocational training and youth mobility, and which carry the political cost when call success rates fall.

The €4.47 billion call for 2026 — already published in November 2025 under the current programme — gives a near-term benchmark. Applicant pressure across mobility strands, KA2 partnerships and centralised actions has run consistently above the budget envelope for two cycles. If the post-2027 architecture lands at the proposed level and indexation holds, the success rate problem narrows but does not disappear. If MFF talks compress the figure, the structural improvements in governance will land on a programme that is already oversubscribed.

The political message from 11 May is that Council wants to move. The partial general approach gives the Cypriot Presidency a base text to take into informal trilogues once Parliament fixes its own report, which is expected before the summer recess. The realistic timetable points to political agreement in early 2027, leaving roughly twelve months for national agencies to prepare implementing structures before the new cycle begins. That sequencing is tight, but it is the first time in three Erasmus+ generations that Council has reached a negotiating mandate this early in the cycle — a small signal that the file is being treated as a priority rather than a default.

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