Help Erasmus during the European elections

Students should help Erasmus during the European elections. The website helperasmus.eu is campaigning for more funds for the Erasmus exchange program. It asks students to vote for politicians who are in favor of the program in the upcoming European elections, .

Currently 1.6% of the EU budget is spent on exchange programmes like Erasmus and the website, run by students, aims at 3%. In 2012, a wave of protest arose when problems between the European Parliament and the European council led to Erasmus funds running dry. A lot of exchange students that where already in a foreign country were cut off from their funds. This crisis was solved in the end, but the students behind Help Erasmus want to make sure this will never happen again. On the website, they write: “Help Erasmus is a project led fully by students in their spare time. Our goal is to increase EU exchange programmes like Erasmus or the European Voluntary Service (EVS) because we think that everyone deserves a chance to go abroad. We are politically completely neutral.”

Students can find a table on the website, that shows which Members of the European Parliament (MEP) are sympathetic to exchange programmes and are most likely to benefit them in the future. You can find the table here.