The European Commission has published the Erasmus+ Annual Report for 2015, that shows newest figures of the EU's education and training programme. To track progress made in the programme, the report covers the second year of implementation of Erasmus+, and provides an overview of all the activities implemented so far with regard to the 2015 calls, under the Annual Work Programme.

Main findings of the report with a focus to those developments in the Higher education sector, include:

• Higher education institutions sent and received through the international credit mobility dimension more than 28,000 students and staff to and from countries beyond Europe. Around 34 000 students and staff benefitted from intra-European mobility opportunities, with an application success rate of 70% (3% increase from 2014).  
• New actions launched in 2015 were the Masters Loan scheme to give students the opportunity to benefit from affordable loans, alongside the new capacity building action in higher education that funded translational cooperation.
• Strategic Partnerships for higher education (KA2) saw a success rate of 16% for projects and a total of EUR 43.3 million in grants following the call 2015.
• Capacity building for higher education saw 138 grant agreements signed, worth EUR 120 million, with highly varying success rates between regions (on average 27%)
• Applications for the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education went down in success rates from 94% in 2014 to 80% in 2015. A steep decline in the number of applications with about 5000 in 2014 to around 700 in 2015 is noted.  
• France, Germany and Spain remain the three top sending countries, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom top the receiving end.
• In 2015 Erasmus+, driven by the Paris declaration, re-oriented to tackle societal challenges, by rolling out activities as: extending the Online Linguistic Support facility to benefit 100,000 refugees over the next three years with EUR 4 million.

During the second year of implementation around €2.1 billion were invested in over 19,600 projects involving 69,000 organisations - that left a difference of EUR 35 million short to the approved budget.  Unused funds of 2015 have been transferred to the 2016 work programme to support the DG Education and Culture’s commitment to advance a resolution in the migrants/refugee crises. Erasmus+ and its predecessors that celebrate 30 years  mark undoubtedly a key success of the European Project, that supported a total of 9 million people. In line with the key target of reaching 4 million mobilities by 2020, Tibor Navracsics, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport aims to extend the number of beneficiaries with a focus on providing more opportunities to students of diverse economic and societal standing.

European Commission – Press release

Erasmus+ Annual Report 2015 – Full report