On March 21th YouthProAktiv joined the event, “Towards more exchanges for pupils”, hosted my MEP Emilian Pavel and organized by EFIL (European Federation for Intercultural Learning, the Youth Intergroup and EEE-YFU (European Educational Exchanges Youth for Understanding. The aim of the event was to raise awareness of the recognition of study abroad among policy-makers and educational stakeholders about the lack of recognition of long-term school mobility and create changes by promoting concrete policy solutions.

Mr. Pavel opened the event with references to the campaign, #RecogniseStudyAbroad, launched in 2016. From his perspective, two main points should be taken into consideration for the recognition of studies in a different country: The Legal angle of all those reforms that still need to  be done in the national education law and policy and those reforms needed on the Erasmus+ program at the European level in order to increase the number of pupils involved in mobility. Strengthening this point, Mr. Ferre Windey, Board Member of OBESSU, highlighted the advantages of Erasmus+ mentioning how much it helps exchange students to understand the value of democracy by analyzing it in different societies. In the same direction, Mrs. Petra Goran, from DG Education and Culture at EC, offered to strengthen Erasmus+ with regards pupils mobility. She also called for Member States to be more transparent in order to ensure higher trust on governmental policies and programs.

As an effort for all. Mr. Pavel encourage all citizens to take action on eliminating borders among the EU by encouraging one another to take part in exchange studies.