The Decision establishing a new Lifelong Learning Programme, was signed by the Presidents of the European Parliament and of the Council on 15 November and was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 24 November. It comes into force on 14 December 2006.

The Commission has published on 20 December the 2007 general Call for Proposals for applications for grants under the programme.

The Lifelong Learning Programme comprises four sectoral programmes on school education (Comenius), higher education (Erasmus), vocational training (Leonardo da Vinci) and adult education (Grundtvig), and is completed by a transversal programme focusing on policy cooperation, languages, information and communication technology and dissemination and exploitation of results. Finally, a Jean Monnet programme focuses on European integration and support for certain key institutions and associations active in the field. The programme budget will be € 6,970 million for the total period 2007-2013.

The aim of the new programme is to contribute through lifelong learning to the development of the Community as an advanced knowledge society, with sustainable economic development, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. It aims to foster interaction, cooperation and mobility between education and training systems within the Community, so that they become a world quality reference.

Please find on the right side of this screen the published calls in EN, DE and FR language as well as administrative and financial information in the three languages.

Text taken from the official EC-website:

www.ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/newprog/index_en.html