Erasmus Without Paper Champions session in Toulouse: towards 2024-25 and beyond

On 17th September, the EWP Champions gathered at the TBS Education campus in Toulouse to discuss strategies for advancing Erasmus Without Paper (EWP) and the wider European Student Card Initiative (ESCI). They focused on measures to

• increase adoption of digital learning agreements , which set out the programme of the studies or the traineeship during an exchange abroad
• achieve the once-only data entry principle in the Erasmus+ mobility process – a concept where people only need to provide standard information to administrations or authorities once

Tackling adoption issues

The session began with a welcome from Stéphanie Lavigne, Dean & Director General of TBS Education, and Florence Ramillon, Director of International Relations.

Through a World Café-style discussion, participants switched around different tables to tackle common issues preventing the adoption of digital learning agreements, such as reliance on paper agreements, premature sharing, and multiple requests for different university faculties.

The result was a set of actionable ideas to help EWP Champions promote the goal of reaching 95% of all learning agreements being exchanged digitally by the end of 2025, and address challenges faced by their institutions and their specific national contexts.

Streamlining once-only workflows

The afternoon focused on reviewing how the mobility process can be simplified through the ‘once-only data entry principle’ for the future Erasmus+ programme phase.

Participants discussed topics including

• improving higher education institutions’ profiles
• linking nominations to inter-institutional agreements (IIAs)
• streamlining learning agreements
• enhancing the Erasmus+ App for students

Groups shared recommendations on how to implement these changes and improve institutional processes. These recommendations will be used as the basis for shaping the development of ESCI into the next programme phase.

Conclusion and next steps

The meeting concluded with group presentations, summarising key takeaways and strategies to further promote peer-learning amongst higher education institutions and EWP champions. Participants agreed the session marked a significant step forward in the path towards making student mobility more efficient and more accessible for all.

EWP is instrumental to supporting the Council Recommendation Europe on the Move, which aims to boost learning mobility and make it as inclusive, seamless and as easy as possible for students within the European Education Area.