Erasmus Programme Erasmus Programme The Erasmus Programme ("EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students") is a European Union (EU) student exchange programme established in 1987. Erasmus+, or Erasmus Plus, is the new programme combining all the EU's current schemes for education, training, youth and sport, which was started in January 2014. The Erasmus Programme, together with a number of other independent programmes, was incorporated into the Socrates programme established by the European Commission in 1994. The Socrates programme ended on 31 December 1999 and was replaced with the Socrates II programme on 24 January 2000, which in turn was
EU Gateway Programme close to 1000 participating companies. 2008 marked a new era in EU Gateway history as the programme was launched in another country, South Korea. All in all, from 2008 – 2014 more than 1500 companies participated in 31 business missions to Japan and 15 business missions to South Korea respectively. Over the past decades the EU and Japan have developed strong economic ties and Japan, the world's third largest economy, is the EU's 7th largest trading partner. Trade between the two partners is expected to increase by a prospective EPA for which the negotiations were launched during the EU-Japan summit