The sad subversion of Erasmus+

The more it tarnishes its critics as puerile, brash, or unserious, the more the European Union betrays its insecurity. Posing as “adults-in-the-room”, the solipsists in the “Eurobubble” have had success with this defensive gaslighting. Yet other times, the pose is less than convincing. Bureaucratic cock-ups seem all too common of late.  

October brought news that the youth scheme Erasmus+, one of the bloc’s pet projects, was being extended to virtually all of North Africa and the Mid-East. The program’s name bears that of the Rotterdam sage — a rare acknowledgement by the EU that something called Europe predates its existence. Erasmus+ is often wryly listed as the EU’s lone palpable success — stably trouncing other initiatives in bloc-wide popularity. No wonder why: EU students spend up to a credit-transferable year in a country of their choosing, on a stipend of up to about €600 a month. 14 million have benefited from the project since its inception in 1987. Enrollment today nears 20 per cent, and it is growing.

Amidst calls for a Brussels DOGE, Erasmus is also a rare case of good value — fun, enrichment, skills — for EU taxpayer’s money. Sometimes, that value might have been unexpected — it has been called “Orgasmus”, for obvious reasons, and “Erasmus babies” number almost a million — but it can also have hard economic results. High-end employers have even baked the languages and experience that once set the Erasmus crowd apart into requirements for entry-level jobs across the board. The program’s high-minded aims remain popular, too: binding Europeans in a common “identity”, in turn connected to the ideal of “ever-closer Union”. Flinging the gates of Erasmus+ open would mean, quite evidently, subverting its purpose. It would be akin to having the lineage-based “Sons of the American Revolution” absorb the descendants of Mexico’s liberators.

Some countries on the EU accession path were at times roped into Erasmus sooner, though never any that could be deemed culturally distinct. After all, the well-travelled Dutch humanist never ventured beyond Europe’s leading libraries, nor has intra-EU student mobility lost any of its appeal. Erasmus+ is not merely European in the way its beneficiaries ought to be by nationality, nor solely in the way its funding will remain. It is — or was, at any rate — a European program in nature. That’s a distinction with a difference, as we’re beginning to learn.

This all changes now. The MENA region is “European” in no sense that could justify its inclusion under the project’s stated motives. It’s unclear how many African and Mid-Eastern applicants will stream onto our campuses (that will depend on enrollment back home, which grows fast) but the eligible pool — all college students in those countries — runs well beyond a third of an already large age cohort. These are non-EU citizens, born outside the Union, in countries with no path to enter, and without themselves having a collective path to EU citizenship. Short of openly  making their participation in the program as a path to legal residency — a surefire effect of the policy, though not its stated motive — a Rubicon was clearly crossed here.

True to its traditional Eurocratic aloofness, this isn’t a glitch the EU took any pains to hide. It even marketed the move as a logical development, true to Erasmus’ foundational drive. Granted, the south and eastward expansion of higher-ed cooperation, including through exchanges involving foreign students coming to the EU, need not be an issue in itself. Partnerships of this kind abound. Academic prizes, research grants, student asylum, programs for scholars or faculty at-risk; all of these would have been fine with the MENA pool in question. Yet at stake is the blanket inclusion of new countries into an essential means of EU identity-building. While Erasmus+ has not changed its purpose, it has become thoroughly de-Europeanised.

The embrace of MENA exacerbates this hollowing out of Erasmus+

Erasmus+ had prior issues. Not all nations on the EU enlargement pipeline have accessed the program at the same pace. The arbitrariness has been heightened inwardly, with Erasmus+ recently forfeiting its universality when the EU Commission swiftly and controversially took 21 Hungarian universities out as part of its sanctions for alleged rule-of-law violations. Hungarian universities remain largely excluded even after Budapest addressed the Commission’s qualms, its students held ransom to a political vendetta. This is an asinine move per the EU’s own, flawed logic. Most harmed by these exclusions are students largely hostile to Hungary’s right-populist leadership who hold, admittedly, a hope for a generational-cum-electoral change at home. They will be punished nonetheless. Other EU students, meanwhile, may still go to Hungary and perhaps — who knows — be indoctrinated into Orbánist Europhobia.

The embrace of MENA exacerbates this hollowing out of Erasmus+. The desire to castigate Hungary’s ideological deviance had overpowered the lofty aim of EU identity-building. But the latter is now being subverted by something worse than any one intra-EU ideological crusade: a devaluing of EU identity itself, once so crucial to the bloc’s telos, in favor of dilution in a larger, extra-European realm. Still on its taxpayer’s dime, Erasmus+ will retain a thin pretense of serving the EU’s youth, but its founding commitments have been irreparably damaged.

Erasmus+ could be merely a case study, not the whole story. Across its word-soup of departments and programs, similar twists prompt the question: who is the EU evolving to serve? While that question is often deployed in defence of at-risk farmers or in screeds against migrants or elites, it strikes a deeper note here. Granted, borders and trade remain prey to the de-centreing of European interests, but at stake in Erasmus+ are the EU’s deepest commitments, not merely its policy direction. EU policies could heretofore deviate from the general interest — say, if they were too open to migration or unfair competition — while still evolving within the mold of the modern sovereign state. They may have commanded few adherents, but the policies could be rationalised in common, us-versus-them terms, insofar as justifications still foregrounded their (mistakenly) alleged benefit to Europe. States, in other terms — and the EU behaved like one — may err in defining or serving their citizens’ interests, but remained on paper committed to them. That mold is breaking. The damp paper has been replaced by something new.

In support of open borders or a particular market-opening deal — even if it was unambiguously harmful in practice — one may (rightly or wrongly) have justified them in European terms. You can’t rationalise the Erasmus+ move in the same way — certainly not by reference to its core stated purpose, now scuttled. African and Mid-Eastern students breaking into a program designed to connect its participants with EU identity — how do you justify that?

Europeans may be slow to realize this shift.They opposed the EU superseding the nation-state — with halting success of late — but may now find themselves playing a different ballgame. Supranational polities may be more or less elitist or open, but the philosophy codified within the EU still had it as the agent and its citizens as the principal. The former was meant to serve the latter’s interests, however interpreted. Supranationalism may have won, to our chagrin, and replaced the nation-state. But in a deeper sense, wherever the EU remained committed to physical people, these were Europeans above others — even if the margin of prioritisation was small. Sovereigntists may be said to be losing the battle they think they’re fighting. There’s another battle they are not even aware of being involved in.

We have the worst of both worlds: the EU is forfeiting loyalty to its own just as it becomes sovereign over them

Erasmus+ is an unmistakable precedent of the EU turning “inside out”, even before formally encompassing the lands and peoples it hugs into its fold. In other words, we have the worst of both worlds: the EU is forfeiting loyalty to its own just as it becomes sovereign over them. Look for differences between that and a new fictional international organization that chose Brussels as its base, and you’ll find few. This one, however, remains more powerful than any other global forum.

Erasmus+ is not the only instance of mold-stretching or scope creep. Consider “Europe for Citizens”, a program fostering European identity and citizenship beyond college cloisters. In 2021, it got folded into the “Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values” (CERV) program — a roof it shares with extra-EU-oriented programs to combat intolerance, discrimination, and promote equality worldwide. It’s clear which of the two proved the stronger. CERV as a whole was first extended to the EU’s association agreements and accession candidates, funding global programs such as Global Europe+ to the tune of €1.5 billion in 2021-27. Non-EU applicants are now eligible. Funding would be the logical next step.

 This is now a familiar pattern: Europe-only programs are first stretched to neighbouring or associated nations, then to the wider world. This trend even applies to traditional forms of economic cooperation. “Interreg”, a €10 billion program to reduce intra-bloc regional disparities, is no longer just an EU program. Neighbouring regions are now looped into projects. Funding hasn’t flowed, but it may soon. “Creative Europe”, likewise, was meant to support European culture and creative sectors but is now open to all and sundry. Even Copernicus, named after another erudite European and formed as the EU’s earth observation unit, now involves non-EU participants. Through the program, the EU observes the globe spin. How small Europe must look from up there.