Since 1987 10 million people in Europe have taken advantage of the Erasmus programme
According to current calculations by the European Commission the ten millionth European will travel to one of the participating countries with Erasmus+ to learn, study, teach or complete an internship on one of the coming days. Austria has been participating very successfully in EU education programmes since 1992. Well over a quarter of a million Austrians have been abroad with Erasmus since then. The largest group are students, with more than 115,000 people. Around 8,600 apprentices and 28,900 pupils in initial vocational training have also been able to get a taste of working life in another country.
The education minister Iris Rauskala (Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF)) congratulated four young people as representatives of all Austrian Erasmus participants. Jakob Calice, managing director of the OeAD, which coordinates Erasmus+ Education in Austria, also wished them every success for their stays.
These are the Austrian Erasmus testimonials
Christina Amrhein is completing her master's degree in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy at the Vienna University of Technology and will be doing a two-month Erasmus internship at Impactrip in Lisbon (Portugal). Maximilian Siegl studies mechatronics/robotics at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien and will be working for six months at Mars in Verden (Germany). Diana Toader and Christoph Pitel are apprentices at KNAPP. Diana is training to be a mechatronics engineer and her one-month Erasmus internship will take her to Valencia (Spain). Christoph is training to be a mechanical engineer and construction designer and will be doing his internship at Volvo in Sweden.
‘The past 32 years show that Erasmus is a success story. The ten million people who have studied, taught or completed an internship in another country have not only strengthened their professional and personal experience; they have also deepened European cohesion,’ said the federal minister Rauskala. The added value of the programme is also confirmed by the latest Erasmus+ Impact Study by the EC. The study concludes that Erasmus+ helps participants find career paths and jobs more quickly. The programme also promotes digital transformation and social inclusion. (Erasmus+ Impact Study, May 2019)
10 million euros in additional funding for Erasmus+ education in Austria in 2019
In 2019 47.4 million euros in EU funding will go to the Austrian education sector – an increase of 25.7 per cent compared to 2018. ‘Thanks to the additional funding of ten million euros more than 23,000 pupils, teachers, apprentices and students will be able to spend an educational stay abroad this year,’ confirms the OeAD’s managing director Jakob Calice. The top five destination countries are Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland and Italy. Austrian participants travelled around 14.5 million kilometres during their stays in 2018, which is equivalent to 361 trips around the world. In 2018 6,019 Erasmus participants travelled abroad from Vienna, followed by Styria (3,479) and Upper Austria (2,334). Since 2014 – the start of the current Erasmus+ Education programme period – 76,344 Austrians have travelled abroad with the EU education programme. By the end of 2019 this figure will exceed 90,000.
www.bildung.erasmusplus.at
Erasmus+ Education Statistics 2014-2019