The problem with Erasmus+ does not begin with the evaluation of applications. It begins long before that, with the way organisations choose to participate in the Programme.
Having spent seven years at the Greek National Agency for Erasmus+ as a School Education Coordinator and an equal number of years as a proposal evaluator in Greece and Europe, I want to share an observation. It is based on my own understanding and experience rather than data, but I believe it reflects something real.
An increasing number of organisations are joining Erasmus+, either because they were created with this goal in mind or because they decide at some point to participate. This development is not negative. In fact, it is one of the Programme's key objectives: to integrate newcomers alongside experienced organisations so that they can gradually use it to strengthen themselves. However, the problem is not who participates, but how.
What I observe, and what I believe lies at the root of most problems that emerge during the evaluation process, is the effort by many organisations to submit as many applications as possible, for as many actions as possible, each year. A large organisation that maximises every possible submission limit, submitting 15 applications or more while also participating in centralised Erasmus+ actions and other European programmes such as Creative Europe and CERV, and a smaller one that submits 6 or 8, essentially face the same issue.
Erasmus+ was not designed as a funding mechanism. It is a supportive, co-funded framework aimed at strengthening organisations and fostering their outward orientation, at the exchange of best practices among them, and at addressing common needs linked to European challenges, priorities and policies. However, when an organisation's strategy relies on the mass submission of applications, the focus inevitably shifts: from targeted development to the statistical probability of approval.
The existence of this phenomenon and the scale it has reached are indeed confirmed by the European Commission's decision to limit the number of applications an organisation can submit for actions managed by National Agencies.
In practice, the consequences are evident. The deadlines for most actions are close together, often identical. The same project managers handle multiple partnerships simultaneously, with different thematic focuses and demanding requirements, often without the expertise each one requires in order to shape it with clarity, appropriate structure and effective planning.
The resulting applications contain ambiguities, weak documentation and a loose connection between needs, objectives, partnership composition and methodology, while evaluators are called upon to identify and, above all, highlight the absence of qualitative characteristics that are required under the Programme regulation and very often missing.
Proportional submission of applications, based on each organisation's experience and operational capacity, would make the process more specific, more creative and potentially more beneficial. Writing teams would dedicate the right amount of time to each application. They would properly analyse and document the needs, design the partnership composition, objectives and methodology appropriately. They would know the Programme and its rules in depth and would understand, I would say, how each question in the application relates to the evaluation criteria. And they would write proposals that can actually be implemented.
Such a choice would gradually bring more success to each applicant organisation, at the right pace, strengthening each team's ability to write good proposals suited to the organisation and its needs. And of course, such a development would perhaps make evaluation what it should be: a creative process focused on innovation, not an attempt to uncover hidden meanings, objectives and intentions in texts that are vague and often hard to follow.