Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-05-Speech-2-258"
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"en.20000905.14.2-258"2
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".
Mr President, I would first like to congratulate the rapporteur on this, his first report, which succeeded straightaway in achieving unanimity. I feel this is a very promising beginning, although undoubtedly the subject lends itself to unanimity; indeed, I do not think that, amongst the impressive number of European programmes available to our citizens, there is a report that is as well-known and as much appreciated by the public, and not just by the students; recently, a grandmother stopped me in the street to thank me for what I was doing for her grandchildren, who were travelling abroad thanks to an Erasmus grant. So, you see, these programmes also achieve the unanimity of the whole population and naturally, they can always be improved.
This year, 110 000 students are receiving the special attention that we give to all aspects of their Erasmus trip and to the smooth running of this section of the Socrates programme, and we thank Parliament for supporting this measure. Admittedly, there are problems. It is often said that only the children of fairly comfortably off families can travel as the others cannot live on this modest grant. If we consult our statistics, however, 4 out of 5 Erasmus students were the first members of their family to study abroad, which does illustrate the role that this programme plays in the opportunities for mobility available in Europe to students of new social backgrounds. Therefore, it is untrue that only children from privileged backgrounds can benefit from Erasmus grants. Furthermore, even if the latter have more to live on because they receive additional help from their parents on top of their grant, in other respects it seems that these financial difficulties are the only criticism made.
Ladies and gentlemen, like you, I would have liked the amount of the loans allocated in the negotiations with the Council over the budgetary appropriations for the Socrates programme to be set at a higher level than they were since I am limited in my ability to increase Erasmus grants as much as I would like. What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, quite simply, the national bodies with decentralised responsibility for student mobility have to take the national situation into consideration and adapt the grant policy accordingly. I have asked the Ministers for Education, each in their own country, to take the necessary steps to grant supplements and advantages for Erasmus students in order to offer those who are not fortunate enough to have a benevolent father or generous grandmother the chance to travel too. I also urge each one of you to contact the Minister for Education in your country so that he will do all he can to remedy this financial problem.
I have asked the ministers to make sure that a larger grant is given to the poorest students. I have asked the regional authorities to make an effort to assist their students and I have asked university rectors to provide for financial resources within their universities to enable students on lower incomes to still benefit from grants, if they want to and if they are eligible. I think that in future, I will once again have to request the help of all the national and regional authorities in this area. Furthermore, I shall consider this question in a moment as the French presidency wishes to develop a real action plan to foster mobility and together with the minister, Mr Jacques Lang, I have just set a specific meeting of the Ministers for Education on the theme of mobility.
On this occasion, we will not only talk about what we would like to do and what we should do in future, but we will cite examples taken from certain countries as models, but not necessarily at national level. I will give you an example at random. In one region of Germany, a regional Minister for Education has created a ‘mobility’ savings scheme in conjunction with banks and building societies so that parents, friends and families, instead of buying vast numbers of toys for children, invest in this scheme which will be available to the child when he is old enough to study abroad.
As you can see, there are good ideas, all sorts of good ideas. I hope that the discussion on ‘mobility’ that the French presidency wanted will get this situation moving and that goodwill will be sought both at a private level and at regional, European and national levels so that the great success of Erasmus will encompass a growing number of students. This is the price to pay for creating Europe, since students who have got to know another country within the framework of Erasmus, who have made friends in another country, at another university, are the true Europeans who will make European policy tomorrow. A greater number of happy Erasmus students is in the interests of our society as a whole. So let us all work together so that there will be a large number of them in future."@en1
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