MEPs meeting within the culture and education committee of the European Parliament adopted on November 27th the new YES EUROPE Programme for youth, education and sports. The new program will benefit over five million students and will be funded with €18 billion for the period between 2014 and 2020.

Members of the committee proposed that the new program should not replace but rather complement other funding programmes at national, local or regional level, and proposed a structure based on three chapters - i.e. education, sports and youth, with a special consideration for this last chapter. Further to the partial general approach agreed by the Council in May this year and after the agreements reached within the Council for education and culture, MEPs agreed that the youth chapter should be differentiated and funded though a different budget line, and therefore included a number of specific objectives in the text approved by the committee.

While the committee considers that the overall programme should be modernized in order to make better use of the budget proposed by the Commission, MEPs propose to keep on using the existing names in the different areas of the programme, such as Erasmus for higher education, Grundtvig for life learning education, Leonardo da Vinci for training abroad, Erasmus Mundus mobility programme for students and professors, Comenius in the case of programs in schools and Youth in Action for youth-focused activities. These programs have shown satisfactory results and are well-recognized by the citizens.

A new facility will also provide funding for students willing to pursue a master programme in another country of the European Union. These students will be able to apply for a loan guaranteed by the facility, and will be entitled to do so for periods of one to two years being eligible for loans between €12,000 and €18,000.

The text adopted by the committee will be debated in plenary session in 2013.