21 Amendments of Isabella ADINOLFI related to 2015/2327(INI)
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas the current deep economic and social crisis affecting the Union, having special incidence on the Mediterranean Member States, but not limited to them, makes Erasmus+ especially relevant for providing opportunities to its young citizens, opening to them actual opportunities for pursuing education, training and sport activities out of their home Member State;
Amendment 19 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C b (new)
Recital C b (new)
Cb. whereas the success of the Erasmus+ programme and its predecessors has also been made possible by the courageous, confident contribution of many unsung modest European citizens, mostly the families and close social networks of beneficiaries, who have shown trust in the programme, and such contribution deserves public recognition and support;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C c (new)
Recital C c (new)
Cc. whereas transparency is always, by default, essential for any public project using taxpayers' money, but it becomes even more important for any programme that brands itself as 'educative', insofar its full managerial and financial transparency shall be interpreted as an example of true, deeply rooted European values;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C d (new)
Recital C d (new)
Cd. whereas a complex, articulate programme like Erasmus+ must be subject to a continuous, detailed participative scrutiny by all parties taking part in it, including individual candidates and beneficiaries, in order to identify inequalities and inefficiencies that must be tackled;
Amendment 22 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C e (new)
Recital C e (new)
Ce. whereas the success of the Erasmus+ programme could be facilitated providing other forms of intensified financial support, while avoiding, at the same time, a drift towards models that overload students with personal debt, something which would be intrinsically contradictory with the conception of the formation years as a moment where the whole society, through the careful and complete formation of its young citizens, invests in its own future;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C f (new)
Recital C f (new)
Cf. whereas the remarkable symbolic and practical successes demonstrated by the Erasmus+ programme, continuing on the wake of its predecessors, deserves to be followed with renewed ambition, effectively conveying to all European youth the formative importance of participation, and expanding destination choices for its beneficiaries;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Observes that when a competently prepared, high quality candidacy does not meet the expected success, due to a lack of resources in the programme, there is both a material loss, concerning the time and other resources invested in the preparation of the application, and an immaterial loss, that could concern frustration and disaffection of the candidates, which in turn could be translated in a future reduced rate of participation, reducing the pool of highly qualified participants; accordingly, invites the Commission, on the one hand, to pursue the search for innovative measures that could mitigate such negative consequences, and on the other hand to enforce maximum transparency through all steps of the selection process, thus avoiding that the rejected candidates could nurture perceptions of unfairness or opacity of the process;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Believes that the 12.7% increase in the total budget in 2017 compared to 2016 and further annual increases in the remaining programme years will result in higher success rates and greater satisfaction among applicants; welcomes the Commission’s intention to allocate an additional EUR 200 million for the remaining programme period; underlines the need to maintain a continuous monitoring of the programme with a view to identify those areas and sectors (e.g. adult mobility, youth) affected by an absolute or comparative scarcity of funding, in order to adopt corrective measures as soon as possible;
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Underlines that a key indicator for measuring the success of the financial aspects of the programme is, very simply said, the time that elapses till the funding reaches the pocket of the individual beneficiary, taking into account that she or he is usually a young person with limited income, often dependent on his or her family, and accordingly financially vulnerable;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Notes that the Student Loan Guarantee Facility was only launched in February 2015 after signature of the delegation agreement with the European Investment Fund (EIF) in December 2014, and that to date there are only three banks in France and Spain participating in this innovative tool; underlines that the overall rate of student indebtment should be monitored in order to avoid an uncontrolled, undesirable increase, and to guarantee that the comprehensive financial instruments used by the programme translate into more individuals helped, with less individual debt load;
Amendment 71 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Stresses that the design of financial instruments must also take into consideration that since the inception of the Erasmus+ programme predecessors till today, families and other local actors close to beneficiaries have provided a significant source of co-financing; accordingly, they deserve recognition and support;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Regrets that organisations representing amateur sportspeople at local level are highly underrepresented as project participants in the implementation of grassroots sports projects; welcomes the introduction of Small Collaborative Partnerships with reduced administrative requirements as an important step in enabling smaller grassroots sports organisations to take part in the programme; underlines that intersectoral action, in this case linking more closely sport and education, can contribute to tackle this shortcoming;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Considers the long-standing brand names (Comenius, Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig and Youth in Action) as important tools in promoting the variety of the programme; calls on all stakeholders to continue to use them in order to maintain and strengthen the identity of the sectoral programmes, to ensure better recognition and to overcome any confusion among beneficiaries; underlines that new creative ideas, where IT technologies can play an important role, are needed in order to reinforce such visibility, linking it not just to the general brand of the programme but also to the actual passage of concrete individual beneficiaries through a visited institution, leaving memory of such a passage as a recognition to their contribution and an inspiration for future participants;
Amendment 99 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Encourages the Commission to continue its efforts towards an open, consultative and transparent way of working and to further improve its cooperation with partners at all levels of implementation; stresses that the Erasmus+ programme should become a transparency flagship for the European Union, recognized as such by its citizens, evolving towards a situation where 100% of its decisions and processes shall become fully transparent, especially regarding their financial dimensions; reminds that fully transparent decisions provide a better perspective for those projects and individuals whose applications have not been successful;
Amendment 102 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12a. Underlines that IT tools should not be understood only as a vector for management, application and administrative processes, but they can provide also valuable ways of keeping in touch with beneficiaries, and for facilitating peer-to-peer contact amongst them, potentially providing support for many other processes, e.g. feedback from beneficiaries, reciprocal mentoring, and enhancing the visibility of the programme;
Amendment 129 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Calls for further improvement of the relevant IT tools and for the focus to be put on streamlining and improving connections between the different tools rather than developing new ones; invites, in such a context, to remember that portable applications are amongst the favourite means of interacting with the web used by our young citizens;
Amendment 143 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Welcomes the introduction of two types of strategic partnerships as a first and important positive step towards increasing the chances for small-sized organisations to participate in the programme; calls on the Commission to make further improvements in order to include moreensure that a minimum predefined share of small-sized organisations are included in programme activities, considering that medium- and large-sized organizations are already advantaged in many dimensions;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Welcomes the introduction of the unit cost system into the programme in order to minimise the administrative burden; welcomes also the adjustments made in 2016 and planned for 2017 by the Commission; considers the further increase in unit cost rates to be necessary to provide sufficient financial support for project participants; underlines that transparency in this area is an essential component of the transparency requirements and targets for the overall Erasmus+ programme;
Amendment 163 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Calls for volunteering to be eligible as a source of own contributions to the project budget, bearing in mind that Erasmus+ enables the recognition of volunteer time as co-financing in the form of contributions in kind; stresses that volunteer contribution must be recognized and granted visibility, due to its special significance for the programme; underlines that the opening towards the above mentioned eligibility must go hand in hand with attentive monitoring of the overall volunteering share, since it would not be fair to burden civil society with responsibilities that must be fundamentally met with public resources;
Amendment 181 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Calls on the Commission to recognise the special nature of projects and mobilities involving people with special needs and people from disadvantaged backgrounds; encourages stronger promotion of the possibilities for people with special needs and for people from disadvantaged backgrounds to engage in the programme and asks that their access thereto be facilitated, ensuring a minimum share of participation, defined with ambitious criteria; underlines that the crisis currently affecting many Member States, especially throughout the Mediterranean region but not limited to it, already makes difficult for many students to pursue a project of higher education at their own Member State, and that it affects even more seriously their possibilities to participate in Erasmus+, where an additional source of co- financing often becomes necessary;
Amendment 232 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Calls on the Commission to keep the separate chapters and separate budgets for education and training, for youth and for sport, bearing in mind their specific characters; while recognizing that intersectoral projects and activities show the potential to enhance the programme's performance, reminds that clear recognisability of those chapters is essential for the adequate planning, implementation and monitoring of the overall programme;