The UK Government has confirmed it will underwrite payments for all Erasmus+ grant agreements signed with the UK’s National Agency for Erasmus+ while the UK is still an EU Member State, even if those payments continue beyond the point of the UK’s eventual EU exit date.

This means that successful UK Erasmus+ applicants in 2017 will be awarded funding for the full duration of their projects, and all current beneficiaries can continue their projects with their partners as usual through to completion. Applicants will also be preparing for participation as usual in the 2018 application deadlines to be announced later this year. You can read the full statement from the UK’s National Agency on their website. 

This confirmation follows an earlier UK government guarantee for all competitive funding, i.e. centralised funding where grant recipients bid directly to the Commission for funds. The UK Treasury will underwrite the funding of successful bids that are submitted before the UK leaves the EU, even if funding continues past the point of exit.

Access to the programme after the UK leaves the EU is of course a matter for the forthcoming negotiations. As one of our key policy priorities, UUK is calling for the UK’s continued participation in the Erasmus+ programme, a programme which facilitates over half of our outward student mobility, and through which we welcome almost 30,000 students, and 3,500 staff a year, from across Europe. UUKi is keen to work with our European partners to reinforce to UK and EU policymakers the shared benefits of student and staff Erasmus+ exchange between the UK and the rest of Europe, and the generations of European-minded, linguistically-able and culturally aware young people it helps to create.

In the meantime, it is business as usual for the UK National Agency for Erasmus+, and our universities are looking forward to welcoming this year’s Erasmus+ cohort, with a record number of applications so far for 2017.

02.05.2017