Beyond Borders Neighbours Together
National Agencies/SALTOs Staff Meeting on Cooperation Between Programme and Neighbouring Partner Countries
8-9 September 2022, Sarajevo
The last National Agency staff meeting with a focus on cooperation between Programme and neighbouring partner countries took place in 2019. At that time, a set of recommendations aiming to support and strengthen the cooperation with partner countries was drafted, which was adopted by the Business Meeting in Helsinki the same year and addressed to the European Commission, DG Education and Culture, in the eve of the launch of the new Erasmus+ programme generation. Important developments have taken place since then, but in essence, these recommendations are still relevant today.
Generally speaking and based on gathered evidence and observations, the cooperation with neighbouring partner countries (now called third countries not associated to the Programmes, regions 1 – 4) has become more challenging rather than easier in the past years.
The intention of the staff meeting was to offer a space to exchange about questions at a very practical as well as a more content-related level, to share information and to develop suggestions on how National Agencies could better support the cooperation with neighbouring partner countries as one of the important dimensions of the European Solidarity Corps and the Erasmus+ programme in the field of youth.
During the staff meeting, the following issues were discussed:
- State of play and realities shared by National Agencies;
- Practices of project monitoring in the neighbouring countries;
- Proposed new calculation of 25% limit for projects with neighbouring partner countries in Erasmus+ KA1;
- Insights from the field, projects’ testimonies;
- How can my National Agency / SALTO better support cooperation with neighbouring partner countries? Exploring topics;
- Next steps and plans for 2023 and 2024.