September 18, 2026

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The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • strategic insight

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September 18, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • strategic insight

LATEST
Riyadh Gets a Summit Date Before the Gulf Trade Text Is WrittenMontenegro Has Fifteen Chapters and Six Months Left to Close ThemPyongyang Earns European Salaries Through Staff Nobody Ever MetNew Zealand Is the Partner Europe Talks To but Has Not SignedIndonesia Wants an October Signature Europe Has Not ScheduledNine Parliaments Still Stand Between Hanoi and Its Investment PactMEPs Back a Democracy Shield That Still Lacks a Legal ActWhy Due Cause Rarely Saves a Political Parody in CourtErasmus Budget Heads for an October Vote With Its Shares UnsettledEurope’s Pharma Package Waits on One Final Parliament Vote in AutumnCouncil Must Sign Off Five Defence Projects Before EDIP Pays OutInvestors Bid 152 Billion for 11 Billion of EU-BondsEgypt’s Macro-Financial Assistance Nears Its Most Political PaymentGreen Hydrogen Gets Fifty-Eight Million of a Twelve-Billion PledgeFerronickel Supply Puts a Chinese Mining Deal in DoubtEU Solidarity Fund Sends 489 Million After Winter StormsForeign Money Now Faces One Screening Rulebook Across the UnionFinland Entered the Deficit List While Nine Older Cases WaitMember States Must Now Criminalise the Abuse of Public OfficePaperless Trade Is the Part of the Singapore Deal That BitesRiyadh Gets a Summit Date Before the Gulf Trade Text Is WrittenMontenegro Has Fifteen Chapters and Six Months Left to Close ThemPyongyang Earns European Salaries Through Staff Nobody Ever MetNew Zealand Is the Partner Europe Talks To but Has Not SignedIndonesia Wants an October Signature Europe Has Not ScheduledNine Parliaments Still Stand Between Hanoi and Its Investment PactMEPs Back a Democracy Shield That Still Lacks a Legal ActWhy Due Cause Rarely Saves a Political Parody in CourtErasmus Budget Heads for an October Vote With Its Shares UnsettledEurope’s Pharma Package Waits on One Final Parliament Vote in AutumnCouncil Must Sign Off Five Defence Projects Before EDIP Pays OutInvestors Bid 152 Billion for 11 Billion of EU-BondsEgypt’s Macro-Financial Assistance Nears Its Most Political PaymentGreen Hydrogen Gets Fifty-Eight Million of a Twelve-Billion PledgeFerronickel Supply Puts a Chinese Mining Deal in DoubtEU Solidarity Fund Sends 489 Million After Winter StormsForeign Money Now Faces One Screening Rulebook Across the UnionFinland Entered the Deficit List While Nine Older Cases WaitMember States Must Now Criminalise the Abuse of Public OfficePaperless Trade Is the Part of the Singapore Deal That Bites

Erasmus Budget Heads for an October Vote With Its Shares Unsettled

Zabit Magomedsharipov
Senior Reporter, Culture and Education

Poznań: The Erasmus budget for 2028 to 2034 reaches the European Parliament’s autumn legislative session in early October 2026, and the number MEPs vote on will be their opening bid against both the Commission and national capitals. Universities in this Polish city, among the heaviest senders of mobility students in the Union, have a direct stake in how the money is sliced.

Bogdan Zdrojewski, the Polish EPP member appointed rapporteur on 4 November 2025, presented his draft report to the Committee on Culture and Education in June. It asks for €47.39 billion, well above the €36.2 billion in 2025 prices the Commission tabled on 17 July 2025, and it reintroduces something the Commission left out.

That something is earmarking. The draft report fixes minimum shares for each strand of the programme rather than leaving allocation to annual work programmes:

  • 73.4% for education and training, with 34.6% reserved inside that for higher education
  • 14.2% for youth and volunteering
  • 4.1% for sport

Higher education organisations welcomed the floors and rejected the level. Seventeen bodies including the European University Association, the European Students’ Union, LERU and The Guild signed a joint statement in June arguing that a 73.4% share cuts education and training by up to ten percentage points against the current programme, and that the proposed budget would barely sustain today’s activity levels, let alone the new scholarships and alliances the regulation adds.

The committee had already asked for more. In its February 2026 opinion to the Committee on Budgets, CULT called for

an increase in the total budget of the proposed Erasmus+ programme, to EUR 50 billion in 2025 prices — Committee on Culture and Education, opinion to the Committee on Budgets

Between that opinion and the draft report, roughly €2.6 billion of ambition quietly disappeared, which tells you how the internal negotiation is going.

Three other committees filed opinions on the file, and their volume shows how contested it has become. Development reported on 20 February 2026 with 286 amendments, Employment and Social Affairs on 5 March with 370, and Budgetary Control on 6 March with 38. The Committee on Budgets delivered the fourth and most consequential opinion in April, because its view on the budgetary dimension binds the Parliament’s position.

Nearly every opinion returns to the same complaint. The Commission asked for unusually wide budgetary flexibility, allowing it to move money between strands during the seven-year period, and committees across the political spectrum want predefined lines instead. National agencies that plan calls years ahead share the concern, since flexibility at Union level becomes uncertainty at theirs.

A second dispute concerns the new scholarships in strategic educational fields, for which a pilot call is already open. MEPs across several committees argue these awards cost far more per student than ordinary mobility grants and would drain the general envelope. Their proposed fix routes the premium to other instruments, principally the European Competitiveness Fund, and leaves Erasmus+ paying only the standard grant.

Context explains the scale of the fight. The Commission’s proposal, set out on the Parliament’s legislative train, raises the programme from roughly €26 billion in the current period to €40.8 billion in current prices, an increase of about half. On paper that is generous. Measured against an expanded scope, inflation since 2021 and mobility targets member states themselves adopted, the sector reads it as flat.

Governments have not shown their hand. The Council’s Education Committee is working on the member states’ position in parallel, and the same sensitivities over flexibility, earmarks and association mechanisms appear in its discussions. Nothing is settled until the whole long-term budget is, and Erasmus+ has historically been one of the few lines heads of government protect when negotiations turn ugly.

What the October vote fixes is the Parliament’s floor. A position built on €47.39 billion and hard earmarks gives negotiators a defensible starting point; a weaker one concedes ground before trilogues begin.

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