European Commission Support

The Free Technology Academy has been set up with support from the European Commission (between 2008-2010) and is continued by a network of partners. This communication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.

The European Commission has defined three overall objectives for education and training, namely:

• improve the quality and effectiveness of education and training systems;
• facilitate access to education and training systems; and
• open up EU education and training systems to the wider world.

In order to reach these goals, the EU Member States have established the Lifelong Learning Programme with several subprogrammes. The FTA did receive support under the Erasmus Programme for Higher Education.

In February 2008 the Free Knowledge Institute submitted the proposal for the Free Technology Academy. In August that year the project was selected and approved by the European Parliament under reference number 142706-LLP-1-2008-1-NL-ERASMUS-EVC. For the set up of the FTA an initial budget of 439.000 Euro is budgeted, of which the European Commission contributes up to 300.000 Euro. The rest is financed by the participating universities.

A list of selected projects within the Erasmus Programme for multilateral projects can be found at the Education, Audiovisual and Cultural Executive Agency (PDF).

The initial FTA project as funded by the Commission ran till 31 December 2010. After that date the Free Knowledge Institute, Open University Netherlands and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya continued the further development and running of the Academy. This is only possibly by the participation of community members, a network of associate partners and a sufficient level of enroled learners.