Brexit uncertainty sparks unease among Erasmus students

The future of the Erasmus student exchange programme in the United Kingdom has been thrown into doubt by the possibility that Britain will leave the European Union – a process popularly known as ‘Brexit’ – without a deal, write Elisa Silió and Patricia Tubella for El País.

The Erasmus programme was created more than 30 years ago by the European Union as a way to bring the continent together through university research and education. The EU sets aside €16.38 billion (US$18.6 billion) of its budget to fund the programme but there is concern Spanish students who want to study in the UK will not receive financial support if there is a so-called hard Brexit, whereby the UK crashes out of the 28-country bloc without a deal.

In Spain, the uncertainty is making many universities and students nervous. “Foreign Services called me on Monday and recommended I choose another destination because they couldn’t guarantee that I would receive a scholarship if I go to the United Kingdom,” says a student from the University of Santiago de Compostela who had been given a spot to study in Leicester. The university, located in Spain’s northwestern Galicia region, has asked 40 Erasmus students to consider universities in Poland, the Netherlands and Norway, to give up their scholarship or to wait and see what happens, albeit in the knowledge that they may be left without financial aid.
Full report on the El País site