The ceremony for the nomination of the first “Leonardo Da Vinci Ambassadors” took place in Graz, in Austria, under the auspices of the European Commission and the Austrian Presidency of the Union. Given the task of promoting the EU’s Leonardo Da Vinci programme for the quality of teaching, professional training and mobility, the twenty ambassadors in question were identified by the responsible national Agencies as “excellent examples of transnational mobility that have benefited from Leonardo scholarships”. Their mission will consist in promoting the programme by conferring a “human face” on it. Only Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg and Slovakia chose not to nominate any ambassador: Belgium, on the contrary, selected two. During the ceremony, the European Prize of quality was awarded to 24 projects that have given hundreds of Europeans the chance to experience a period abroad as part of their professional training course. It is estimated that over 300,000 persons from 31 countries have benefited from mobility grants awarded by Leonardo since 2000.
