The European Union as a Global Value-shaper through the Erasmus+ Programme : The Action of the Capacity Building in the field of Vocational Education and Training 2022

Författare

Aleksa Agrina

Summary, in English

Over the years, the Erasmus+ Programme has grown from a framework with options limited to the few Member States at the time to an extensive Programme with opportunities provided to countries inside and outside of the European Union. Some actions of the Erasmus+ Programme allow countries outside the EU, so-called third countries, to participate in the projects as partners. One such action is Capacity Building in the field of Vocational Education and Training (CB VET), which was introduced in the Programme in 2022. In this context, the paper examines how the European Union uses the Erasmus+ Programme as an EU value-sharing and promotion tool. Specifically, the case of the CB VET action and its selected projects for 2022 is viewed. Using five value categories such as socio-cultural, political, economic, earth and international order values, as well as the Institutional Isomorphism theory and the methodology of thematic analysis, a study with analysis has been conducted.
The results of the study show that the EU directly promotes its values, such as inclusion and diversity, digital transformation, sustainable environmental development, participation in democratic life and civic engagement through the Erasmus+ Programme Guide, as they must be taken into account for the projects that wish to apply for the chance of receiving a grant. These values regard all Erasmus+ projects, no matter which action they are under. As a result, the EU practises value-sharing over a vertical, top-down, Institutional Isomorphism manner through the guidelines for the projects and through the award criteria. However, when it comes to the project descriptions, projects are practising both vertical sharing of values in a top-down manner from the EU towards the third countries and also in a horizontal manner through learning from each of the partners within a project. Furthermore, when analysing the project descriptions, it is found that the economic values of decreasing the unemployment rates and improving the socio-economic situation in third countries are the most directly visible in the projects. Also, socio-cultural EU values such as inclusion and diversity are highly evident in the projects. EU value promotion, in general, visibly appeared through international order values in the project descriptions.

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