Educational policies and initiatives of the European Union Lifelong Learning programme comprises separate sub-programmes for schools; universities and higher education; vocational education and training; adult education; teaching about the EU in universities; and a 'horizontal' programme for policy development. The schools exchange programme, named after the 15th century Czech teacher, scientist and educator John Amos Comenius, has helped over 2.5 million school students take part in joint projects across boundaries. The Erasmus programme (named after Desiderius Erasmus, the 16th century Dutch humanist and theologian), has been the icon of university exchange programmes since its launch in 1987. Some two million students have so far spent a fully accredited
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