Press Release: "Jan Figel’, European Commissioner for Education and Training, said: “Tempus is a well-known and popular programme in the academic worlds of the EU and its partner countries, and has become a major gateway to international contacts. It is based on the understanding that higher education institutions are a vital part of any process for social and economic transition in our neighbouring countries, and that they are a privileged vehicle to ensure better prospects for future generations.”

Tempus is the European Union’s programme for supporting the modernisation of higher education and enhancing understanding between cultures in 27 countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean region, mainly through university cooperation projects. It develops and upgrades curricula and university management practices, promotes higher education reform, supports the introduction of the “Bologna Process principles”, opens universities to the outside world and encourages mobility of academic and administrative staff. Since 1990, the Tempus programme has financed more than 1000 projects in its partner countries.

Tempus projects are organised as consortia between institutions in EU Member States and those in the partner countries. The projects fall into three categories, the most important of which is that of the Joint European Projects. These are innovative multilateral initiatives with a true European dimension, as they involve at least one university from a partner country, one university in an EU Member State, and one academic or non-academic consortium member in a different EU Member State. Joint European Projects aim at transferring knowledge from EU universities to institutions in the partner countries in the areas of curriculum development, university management and institution building. They have a strong mobility component, with exchanges of faculty, administrators and university students taking place from the partner countries to the EU and vice versa.

The European Commission has selected a total of 110 Joint European Projects (JEPs) with an EC contribution totalling € 46 million. These projects cover a broad range of disciplines highly relevant to the reform processes taking place in the partner countries: they range from business, management, engineering, agriculture and environmental studies to modern languages, social and European studies. Through a rigorous selection procedure and a consultation process with the national authorities, the Commission has ensured that the selected projects are of high quality and in line with national educational priorities.

The other two project categories are Structural and Complementary Projects, which are designed to support national higher education reforms and strategic framework development, and Individual Mobility Grants, which are awarded to higher education professionals in the partner countries who have a professional project for upgrading their skills. The European Commission has selected 61 Structural and Complementary Measures with an EU contribution of € 7½ million. These measures are mainly used to accompany the partner countries in their efforts to align their higher education systems with the principles of the Bologna process, to create a European higher education area.

Three other Tempus calls for proposals will be organised before the end of the year: in October for Structural and Complementary Measures and Individual Mobility Grants; in December for Joint European Projects.
For further information on the selected projects, and Tempus in general, please refer to: http://ec.europa.eu/tempus"

Further information is available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/tempus/index_en.html

source: EC Press Release IP/06/998 of 17 July 2006 available from http://europa.eu/rapid