Of Youth-In-Action and Erasmus-For-All

Question:

I was reading about Erasmus for All 2014-2020 that will ultimately replace Youth in Action, which ends 2013. Generally the youth-network/NGO prefer YiA to be separated from it, citing the danger of losing focus on youth and non-formal learning, or event to extent of reaching out to the less privilege/fewer opportunity.

While I am interested to know if that statement is true i.e. less funding for youth/non-formal/workcamp organisation, as some organisation, for instance in Spain, sent distress call on operation budget cut. I wonder if these could be related chain of events.

Answer:

Well i can give you an update of the discussion going on, but nothing is decided yet and there are serious discussions (see: disagreement) concerning the budget at the moment on the council level, so it is all very much not definitive!

Concerning the merging into the education programme (life long learning), there actually is the risk that small NGOs and youth workers will be less taken into consideration and will most probably have to work with big (coordinating) organisations if they still want to receive grants. Which could nevertheless be good for the quality of projects as they would be supported by bigger and experienced institutions.

But it does not mean that they won't have any access to the money, they rather will have to change their approach concerning applying for funding.

The new proposal has actually a lot more money for projects and mobility in comparison to what we have now, and the aim is to facilitate the procedure and have less sub-actions so that the whole programme is more transparent and less complicated (that is just the aim anyway, which does not mean that the commission has the right solutions to solve the current issues).

In the case of (distress call from) Spain, their problem are much more linked to the national situation and the local concurrence. Their The situation of the Spanish national agency is also mostly independent from the general European context, and there are very big differences between the national agencies in each country. Hence this new structure should not have huge consequences on their funding, as long as they adapt to the new funding rules, which they have already done before. Moreover, if they wants to receive funding, they can also apply to the executive agency in Bruxelles or in the country of a partner organisation, depending on the project.