ANKARA
Turkish Minister of EU and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis has said that Turkey's Erasmus budget was secured and Erasmus programme in Turkey would not be affected from the financial trouble within the EU budget.
A statement released by the ministry on Friday clarified recent claims saying Turkey's Erasmus budget was cut.
The statement said that it was true that there was a problem within the related EU budget but countries financially supporting the program such as Turkey, Switzerland and Croatia were excluded.
As part of Turkey's 2012 Erasmus budget, around 18,000 college students as well as 4,000 academics would go to European universities for a period of at least one week and at most one year.
The Erasmus programme is a European student exchange programme established in 1987 offering university students a possibility of studying or working abroad in another European country for a period of at least 3 months and maximum 12 months. The name of the project refers to Dutch Renaissance humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. He studied at diverse European universities and described the education as a chance for modern people.
Since 2007 the Erasmus project is a part of The Lifelong Learning Programme (other projects: Comenius, Grundtvig and Leonardo da Vinci), which is determined for the years 2007-2013.
