SOCRATES PROGRAMME AND ITS ACTIONS

The SOCRATES programme is largely managed by the National Agencies in each of the participant countries, which makes it possible to have more direct contact with the public. The details of these different agencies are given on the last page of this brochure. 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2006 the could be joined this programme.

SOCRATES is based on Articles 149 and 150 of the EC Treaty. Article 149 provides that the Community «shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States» through a range of actions, such as promoting mobility, exchanges of information or the teaching of the languages of the European Union. The Treaty also contains a commitment to promote life-long learning for all the Union's citizens.

The Community supports and supplements the actions of the Member States in the field of education while respecting their responsibility for the content of teaching and the organisation of national education systems. Therefore, the Community has a complementary role to play: to add a European dimension to education, to help to develop quality education and to encourage life-long learning. The Socrates programme is the main tool for putting this ambition into practice.

SOCRATES Programme has more useful aims as we can see below;

• to strengthen the European dimension of education at all levels;
• to improve knowledge of European languages;
• to promote cooperation and mobilitythroughout education;
• to encourage innovation in education
• to promote equal opportunities in all sectors of education.

Socrates Programme contains eight (8) different Actions:

1. Comenius: school education

2. Erasmus: higher education

3. Grundtvig: adult education and other education pathways

4. Lingua: learning European languages

5. Minerva: information and communication technologies (ICT) in education

Participating countries

There are a total of 31 countries taking part: 25 European Union Member States:

Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia; Cyprus, Malta

3 EFTA countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway.

3 candidate cuntries: Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey.