The European Parliament’s commission for culture and education unanimously approved, in recent days, a report by Marielle De Sarnez on the Erasmus Mundus programme. Complementing the already well-known Erasmus programme for inter-university student exchanges within the EU, the programme is aimed at opening European universities and colleges to students from all over the world. The Commission’s proposal, establishing a programme to improve the quality of higher education and the promotion of intercultural understanding through cooperation with third countries, was examined by the EP during its plenary session (20-23 October). The programme has a duration of five years, from 1st January 2004 to 31 December 2008. It will offer study grants to over 4000 graduate students from third countries and to a thousand or so university teachers. MEPs hope that at the end of the university degree course proposed, which will be called “Erasmus Mundus Master”, the beneficiary students will be able to speak at least two of the official languages of the Union. The budgetary appropriation now proposed for the programme is equivalent to 230 million euros, a figure that the Commission hopes will be accepted by the Council.
