The European Commission adopted the ENPI Interregional Action Programme for 2011. It covers the European Neighbourhood countries and Russia and is worth a total of €52 million.

Out of this allocation:

• €36 million will support mobility of students and academic staff, fostering higher education co–operation between the EU and the neighbouring partner countries (through Erasmus Mundus).

• €7 million will support partner countries' harmonisation and approximation of their national legislations with EU rules (through TAIEX)

• €9 million will support advances of governance reforms in the partner countries (through SIGMA).

Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle stated: 'The development of human capital is among our priorities for the cooperation with our neighbours. Through exchange of experience between academics, civil servants and students, we seek to achieve better understanding and mutual enrichment between the European Union and our partner countries."

Background

The Inter–regional Programme (IRP) promotes the development of higher education in the EU’s neighboring partner countries and provides mechanisms to improve student and academic mobility.

The Erasmus Mundus programme (Action 2 partnerships) provides support for the establishment of cooperation partnerships between European higher education institutions and higher education institutions from targeted third countries. Scholarships of various lengths can be awarded to interested students who fulfil the application criteria. The exchange programme is open to undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and post–doctoral students from the partner countries and will allow for student and teaching staff exchanges. Since 2007, already almost 4000 students from the Neighbourhood partner countries and Russia benefited from this exchange programme.