August 10, 2026

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The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
Five Joint Defence Projects Launch Europe’s Military ShieldElectrification Plan Aims to Make Europe First Electro ContinentHorizon Europe Budget Fight Heats Up as Ministers Push BackGoogle’s DMA Fine Sets Off a Transatlantic Tariff ClashTwenty New University Alliances Join Erasmus for Two YearsForeign Subsidies Case Puts Temu in the EU’s SightsVan Tachographs Now Mandatory for Cross-Border FleetsStress Test Exposes Gaps in Euro Area Bank DefencesEurope Bets on a Gulf Partnership Before the Riyadh SummitWhy the Atlantic Route Now Runs Through MauritaniaKyiv and Chisinau Advance as the EU Accession Talks Gather PaceEurope’s New Digital Border System Beds In After a Rocky RolloutBrussels Mounts Its Largest Wildfire Response as the Fires SpreadRetail Spending Slipped in June, Wrong-Footing EconomistsHeatwave Warning Puts Brussels on Alert for Vulnerable GroupsKANAL’s 230 Million Euro Museum Sets a November Opening DatePension Savings Rules Get a Reset as the EU Scraps the 1% CapMedicine Shortages Move to the Heart of Europe’s Pharma ResetJapan Becomes Europe’s Closest Security Partner in AsiaCan Europe’s New Zealand Deal Anchor It in the Pacific?Five Joint Defence Projects Launch Europe’s Military ShieldElectrification Plan Aims to Make Europe First Electro ContinentHorizon Europe Budget Fight Heats Up as Ministers Push BackGoogle’s DMA Fine Sets Off a Transatlantic Tariff ClashTwenty New University Alliances Join Erasmus for Two YearsForeign Subsidies Case Puts Temu in the EU’s SightsVan Tachographs Now Mandatory for Cross-Border FleetsStress Test Exposes Gaps in Euro Area Bank DefencesEurope Bets on a Gulf Partnership Before the Riyadh SummitWhy the Atlantic Route Now Runs Through MauritaniaKyiv and Chisinau Advance as the EU Accession Talks Gather PaceEurope’s New Digital Border System Beds In After a Rocky RolloutBrussels Mounts Its Largest Wildfire Response as the Fires SpreadRetail Spending Slipped in June, Wrong-Footing EconomistsHeatwave Warning Puts Brussels on Alert for Vulnerable GroupsKANAL’s 230 Million Euro Museum Sets a November Opening DatePension Savings Rules Get a Reset as the EU Scraps the 1% CapMedicine Shortages Move to the Heart of Europe’s Pharma ResetJapan Becomes Europe’s Closest Security Partner in AsiaCan Europe’s New Zealand Deal Anchor It in the Pacific?
August 10, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
Five Joint Defence Projects Launch Europe’s Military ShieldElectrification Plan Aims to Make Europe First Electro ContinentHorizon Europe Budget Fight Heats Up as Ministers Push BackGoogle’s DMA Fine Sets Off a Transatlantic Tariff ClashTwenty New University Alliances Join Erasmus for Two YearsForeign Subsidies Case Puts Temu in the EU’s SightsVan Tachographs Now Mandatory for Cross-Border FleetsStress Test Exposes Gaps in Euro Area Bank DefencesEurope Bets on a Gulf Partnership Before the Riyadh SummitWhy the Atlantic Route Now Runs Through MauritaniaKyiv and Chisinau Advance as the EU Accession Talks Gather PaceEurope’s New Digital Border System Beds In After a Rocky RolloutBrussels Mounts Its Largest Wildfire Response as the Fires SpreadRetail Spending Slipped in June, Wrong-Footing EconomistsHeatwave Warning Puts Brussels on Alert for Vulnerable GroupsKANAL’s 230 Million Euro Museum Sets a November Opening DatePension Savings Rules Get a Reset as the EU Scraps the 1% CapMedicine Shortages Move to the Heart of Europe’s Pharma ResetJapan Becomes Europe’s Closest Security Partner in AsiaCan Europe’s New Zealand Deal Anchor It in the Pacific?Five Joint Defence Projects Launch Europe’s Military ShieldElectrification Plan Aims to Make Europe First Electro ContinentHorizon Europe Budget Fight Heats Up as Ministers Push BackGoogle’s DMA Fine Sets Off a Transatlantic Tariff ClashTwenty New University Alliances Join Erasmus for Two YearsForeign Subsidies Case Puts Temu in the EU’s SightsVan Tachographs Now Mandatory for Cross-Border FleetsStress Test Exposes Gaps in Euro Area Bank DefencesEurope Bets on a Gulf Partnership Before the Riyadh SummitWhy the Atlantic Route Now Runs Through MauritaniaKyiv and Chisinau Advance as the EU Accession Talks Gather PaceEurope’s New Digital Border System Beds In After a Rocky RolloutBrussels Mounts Its Largest Wildfire Response as the Fires SpreadRetail Spending Slipped in June, Wrong-Footing EconomistsHeatwave Warning Puts Brussels on Alert for Vulnerable GroupsKANAL’s 230 Million Euro Museum Sets a November Opening DatePension Savings Rules Get a Reset as the EU Scraps the 1% CapMedicine Shortages Move to the Heart of Europe’s Pharma ResetJapan Becomes Europe’s Closest Security Partner in AsiaCan Europe’s New Zealand Deal Anchor It in the Pacific?

Erasmus Plus Architects Push New Generation Toward 2028 Launch

Zabit Magomedsharipov
Senior Reporter, Culture and Education

Bologna: The architects of the next Erasmus+ programme are entering the final stretch of preparing what the Commission is internally calling the post-2027 cycle, the seven-year successor that will absorb the regulatory and political shifts of the past three years and set the rules for mobility, partnerships, and educational cooperation across the Union. Working groups assembled by the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture have been meeting since January under the rubric of the next-generation impact assessment, and the team running consultations from Bologna’s coordination hub has been collating feedback from national agencies, university alliances, vocational training providers, and youth organisations on what the successor programme needs to fix and what it should preserve.

The big question facing the next programme is how to scale up without breaking the model. Erasmus+ has expanded relentlessly across each programming period since 1987, but the 2021-2027 cycle ran into capacity walls at several national agencies, where staffing did not keep pace with the growing volume of applications, particularly in cooperation strands. The Commission’s interim evaluation, published last spring, flagged both administrative bottlenecks and quality concerns. Universities reported that lump-sum project models, introduced to reduce paperwork, had created new headaches in audit and reporting. Vocational training providers raised the alarm about declining unit-cost values in real terms as inflation outpaced index adjustments.

The European Universities initiative, which now binds together sixty-five transnational alliances covering more than five hundred higher-education institutions, is at the heart of the redesign debate. Alliance coordinators have argued that the current funding architecture, split between Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe, is too fragmented to support the joint legal status the Commission has promised to make available from 2025. The European Degree Label, formally adopted last year and now in pilot phase with a first wave of alliances, requires more durable institutional plumbing than any short cycle can offer, and rectors are pressing for predictable multi-annual funding lines that follow the alliances rather than individual projects.

The youth strand is undergoing its own quiet revolution. DiscoverEU, originally a flagship of the political communication agenda, has expanded its inclusion measures to the point where a clear majority of participants now come from disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the most recent monitoring data from the Salto Resource Centres. The next programme is expected to consolidate this inclusion machinery, partly to answer the long-standing critique that Erasmus served mainly the children of the middle classes. The European Solidarity Corps, currently a separate instrument, is also under scrutiny for possible integration into a broader youth volunteering line, although several national agencies have warned that the merger could dilute the visibility of solidarity activities.

Vocational education and training is the area where the impact assessment will likely propose the most structural change. The current programme allocates a fixed quota to VET mobility, but member states with strong dual systems have pressed for a substantial uplift, arguing that the labour market case for apprenticeship mobility is stronger than ever given persistent skills shortages in trades such as construction, electrical installation, and care. The German, Austrian and Danish ministries have been particularly vocal in technical meetings, urging the Commission to put VET mobility at the centre of the next generation’s narrative rather than treating it as a sub-line of the higher-education strand.

The geopolitical dimension is now woven into the policy debate. The international mobility strand, which finances exchanges with partner countries outside the Union, is expected to gain new emphasis on enlargement candidate countries, with Ukrainian, Moldovan, Georgian and Western Balkan students and trainees in line for expanded windows. Commission officials have hinted that the next regulation may include dedicated envelopes that follow the rhythm of accession negotiations rather than the broad regional baskets used in the current period.

The legislative proposal is expected in the final quarter of 2026, allowing for two years of co-decision before the new programme enters into force in January 2028. The political stakes are unusually high. Erasmus remains the single most popular EU instrument in opinion surveys, and ministers have signalled that none of them want their fingerprints on a programme that visibly retreats from the gains of the past decade.

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