On the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Erasmus+ programme for the period 2028-2034, and repealing Regulations (EU) 2021/817 and (EU) 2021/888

for the Committee on Culture and Education on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Erasmus+ programme for the period 2028-2034, and repealing Regulations (EU) 2021/817 and (EU) 2021/888

(COM(2025)0549 – C100170/2025 – 2025/0222(COD))

The Committee on Budgets has carried out a budgetary assessment of the proposal under Rule 58 of the Rules of Procedure and has reached the following conclusions:

The Committee on Budgets,

A.whereas Erasmus+ is a flagship Union programme supporting education, training, youth and sport, as well as volunteering and active citizenship in the future programming period, and plays a central role in promoting European values, cross-border cooperation and youth engagement;

B.whereas the Erasmus+ programme plays a key role in building up learning mobility abroad and has a positive effect on participants’ attitudes towards the Union, increasing their sense of European identity, hence bringing EU added value;

C.whereas the Erasmus+ programme strengthens human capital, mobility and skills and thus contributes to European competitiveness, social and economic cohesion and the creation of the Union of Skills;

D.whereas demand for participation in the Erasmus+ programme through past programming periods has largely exceeded the available financial resources, resulting in reduced participation opportunities and a significant number of projects remaining unfunded;

E.whereas the Draghi report called for a fivefold increase in the budget of the Erasmus+ programme in order to reach its ambition of providing mobility opportunities to every young person in the Union; whereas investment in education, skills and human capital is a strategic condition for Europe’s long-term productivity, competitiveness and resilience;

F.whereas the programme has been affected particularly by rising living costs that exceed average grant levels for many cities, as well as by high rates of inflation over the current multiannual financial framework (MFF), both of which have created barriers to the participation of young people from less privileged backgrounds and from Member States with lower purchasing power, in particular from Central and Eastern Europe;

G.whereas volunteering, spearheaded by the massively oversubscribed European Solidarity Corps programme, proved to have a positive effect in contributing to Union leadership competences while addressing social and global challenges around the world;

1.Considers that the Erasmus+ programme envelope should be increased from EUR 40 827 000 000 in current prices to EUR 47 387 963 000 in current prices (EUR 42 000 000 000 in 2025 prices) enabling it to pursue its successful actions; recalls the need to ensure an optimal integration of the European Solidarity Corps programme;

2.Recalls the targets of the ‘Europe on the Move’ Council Recommendation, which, by 2030, aims to ensure that in higher education the share of graduates with a learning mobility experience abroad is at least 23 %, and in the vocational education and training sector, the share of vocational learners benefiting from a learning mobility experience abroad is at least 12 %; highlights that in order to meet these targets, the proposed budget appears insufficient and an increase is required;

3.Considers that sufficient resources, including human, technical and IT resources, must be available from the outset and throughout the entire programming period of the 2028-2034 MFF to ensure an effective implementation of the Erasmus+ programme;

4.Deplores the lack of a breakdown of the budget of the Erasmus+ programme, particularly compared to the situation in the current MFF; notes that this would give the Commission great latitude to shift and decide on spending priorities during implementation; stresses that simplification and flexibility must not come at the expense of transparency and oversight of the budgetary authority; recommends, therefore, that the basic act include appropriate sub-envelopes for three fields, namely, ‘education and training’, ‘youth and volunteering’ and ‘sport’, in order to ensure predictability, transparency and effective implementation of these programme fields;

5.Deplores the lack of a sufficiently detailed indicative budgetary nomenclature proposed in the Legislative Financial and Digital Statement (LFDS); considers that this will hamper oversight and the budgetary authority’s ability to steer accurately policy priorities in the annual budgetary procedure; expresses concerns that the overly aggregated budgetary architecture would dramatically increase the Commission’s discretion in transferring and reallocating resources without a decision from the budgetary authority, and would severely limit parliamentary oversight; recommends therefore a more detailed nomenclature that properly reflects the objectives and structure of Erasmus+ and enhances transparency, accountability and parliamentary control;

6.Recalls that the budgetary nomenclature must comply with Article 47(2) of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 (the Financial Regulation), which provides that each title must correspond to a policy area and each chapter, as a rule, to a programme or an activity, in line with the principles of specification, sound financial management and transparency; recommends that the Committee on Culture and Education amend the proposal to include an annex defining the nomenclature of Erasmus+; insists that the budgetary nomenclature forms an integral part of Parliament’s negotiating position and must be discussed in interinstitutional negotiations; considers, in this regard, that the revised LFDS must form part of the final political agreement;

7.Insists that sufficiently detailed and sound legislation, with an appropriate level of governance, is a condition for proper budgetary decision-making and adequate parliamentary oversight during budget implementation; recommends introducing provisions to strengthen control over how the budget is mobilised and spent;

8.Believes that all substantive policy choices, such as programme objectives, spending priorities, financial allocations, funding rates, eligibility, selection and award criteria, conditions and definitions must be determined in the basic act, with full respect for Parliament’s prerogatives as a co-legislator and one arm of the EU’s budgetary authority and that any non-essential elements entailing policy choices that are not included in the basic act must be adopted through delegated acts, including work programmes;

9.Calls for the simplification of administrative procedures and reporting requirements for newcomer organisations, small organisations and organisations with smaller administrative capacity, including the reduction of application complexity and the harmonisation of rules across actions in order to improve uptake of the programme by such beneficiaries; points out that funding mechanism schemes, including rules related to pre-financing and co-financing, could constitute barriers to participation for these types of organisations and therefore recommends a review of these provisions;

10.Calls for effective synergies between Erasmus+ and other programmes, in particular the European Competitiveness Fund, Horizon Europe, Global Europe and the National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs), as well as the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and AgoraEU; stresses that enhanced synergies between instruments must not come at the expense of traceability of expenditure or the prerogatives of the budgetary authority; underlines that the contribution of Erasmus+ to operations financed jointly with other instruments must be explicitly identifiable at all stages of the budgetary cycle; stresses in this regard that any such contribution must be duly reflected in the programme performance statement for Erasmus+; insists that the budgetary authority retain full control over how resources are combined across instruments and over the effective contribution of each programme to Union priorities, specifically through detailed budgetary nomenclature; stresses that enhanced complementarity between programmes must not lead to disproportionate complexity for beneficiaries; calls for Union funding to be clearer, more accessible and more coherent in order to facilitate uptake and maximise the impact of investments;

11.Recommends that in order to foster the building of the Union of Skills and enhance the competitiveness of the Union, particular attention should be paid to synergies between the Erasmus+ programme and the European Competitiveness Fund and Horizon Europe; notes that such synergies may include financial contributions from other Union programmes, in particular the European Competitiveness Fund, contributing to the scholarships being introduced in Erasmus+ and falling under one or more of the windows as referred to in Article 1 of the proposed regulation on the European Competitiveness Fund, while Horizon Europe would provide added value in contributing to the partnerships for excellence and innovation, including for a seamless journey of young people pursuing a research career, especially the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) component of the ‘Excellent Science’ pillar of the proposed regulation on establishing Horizon Europe; suggests that an action plan by the Commission outlining the opportunities for synergies with other programmes and how to operationalise them would be an important step towards the materialisation of such synergies in practice;

12.Recalls that good practices from different Member States have shown that the ESF+ can be an important complementary element to the Erasmus+ programme, especially when it comes to enhancing the inclusion component of the programme and fostering the participation of people with fewer opportunities; insists that, with the ESF+ becoming an integral part of the National and Regional Partnership Fund (NRP Fund) under the 2028-2034 MFF, it is essential to allow and support the established synergies and complementarity between the programme and the NRP Fund and NRPPs;

13.Stresses that the use of external assigned revenue under the Erasmus+ programme must be clearly circumscribed, fully transparent and subject to effective parliamentary scrutiny; takes note in that regard of the provisions relating to additional financial contributions by any participating third country and other third parties; recalls the importance of ensuring the traceability of external assigned revenue; underlines that, should the Committee on Culture and Education consider amending provisions relating to external assigned revenue, this should be done in coordination with the Committee on Budgets and the other committees in order to ensure a consistent approach;

14.Recognises that contributions by third parties, including from the private sector, can be beneficial to Erasmus+; emphasises that such contributions must be implemented in accordance with the Financial Regulation, in particular with regard to independence and impartiality;

15.Recalls the proposal for a regulation on establishing a budget expenditure tracking and performance framework and other horizontal rules for the Union programmes and activities (the ‘performance regulation’), which establishes a single streamlined list for performance indicators and monitoring and evaluation provisions, some of which are relevant for Erasmus+; underlines that any change to the architecture, objectives and eligible actions under the programme will need to be appropriately reflected in Annex I of the performance regulation, as part of the process of amending and negotiating that regulation; points out that, while sectoral legislation can supplement the performance regulation, for instance as regards programme evaluations, it should remain consistent with the provisions of that regulation;

16.Recalls that under Article 6(2) and 6(3) of the Financial Regulation, a general regime of conditionality applies to the establishment and implementation of the budget in case of breaches of the rule of law; underlines, furthermore, that Article 6(3) of the same regulation requires the Member States and the Commission must, in the implementation of the budget, ensure compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and respect the values on which the Union is founded, as enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union; in this regard, calls for a comprehensive ex-ante screening in the award procedure process under the programme;

17.Insists that in cases of breaches of the rule of law by national governments and without prejudice to the application of Regulation 2020/2092, the Commission should explore ways of ensuring that potential final beneficiaries and recipients can continue to benefit from Union funding; stresses that this principle lies at the core of a ‘smart conditionality’ approach;

18.Calls for at least 75 % of the programme’s budget to be implemented under indirect management, ensuring an adequate level of predictability of resources for the national agencies; emphasises the need to avoid substantial reductions in the annual budget allocated to the Member States from one year to the next; stresses that such management should be accompanied by robust oversight and reporting mechanisms, including adequate safeguards regarding transparency, good governance and prevention of conflicts of interest, in order to ensure the effective use of resources;

19.Recalls that one of the biggest barriers to participation in the programme, especially for people with fewer opportunities, seems to be an insufficient level of funding, which in many instances does not take into account the living and subsistence costs in the host country, inflation rates or student accommodation modalities; calls on the Commission to carry out an in-depth review of the current system for setting funding rules for mobility grants under the programme in order to ensure that grant amounts are adapted to the needs of those participating in the mobilities, and to enhance the Erasmus+ programme’s inclusion component, as well as to enable broader participation and support potential participants facing financial constraints;

20.Insists on a structured cooperation with national agencies in the preparation of the work programmes and the revised funding rules;

21.Stresses the need to equip the programme with the necessary tools to respond effectively to crisis situations affecting participants, including armed conflicts, geopolitical instability, pandemics or other major disruptions.

As part of its budgetary assessment, the Committee on Budgets also submits the following amendments to the proposal:

Amendment 1

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 9

Amendment 2

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 38

Amendment 3

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 38 a (new)

Amendment 4

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 44 a (new)

Amendment 5

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 45 a (new)

Amendment 6

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 45 b (new)

Amendment 7

Proposal for a regulation

Recital 51 a (new)

Amendment 8

Proposal for a regulation

Article 9 – paragraph 1

Amendment 9

Proposal for a regulation

Article 11 – paragraph 1

Amendment 10

Proposal for a regulation

Article 12 – paragraph 5

Pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure, the rapporteur for budgetary assessment declares that she included in her budgetary assessment input on matters pertaining to the subject of the file that she received, in the preparation of the budgetary assessment, prior to the adoption thereof in committee, from the following interest representatives falling within the scope of the Interinstitutional Agreement on a mandatory transparency register, or from the following representatives of public authorities of third countries, including their diplomatic missions and embassies:

The list above is drawn up under the exclusive responsibility of the rapporteur.

Where natural persons are identified in the list by their name, by their function or by both, the rapporteur declares that she submitted to the natural persons concerned the European Parliament’s Data Protection Notice No 484 (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/data-protect/index.do), which sets out the conditions applicable to the processing of their personal data and the rights linked to that processing.