At the recent international donors' conference titled “Solidarity with Belarus”, delegates of the European Commission and other international contingents gathered in Warsaw to discuss, propose responses to, and generally call for action regarding the ongoing political and social turmoil in Belarus. In total, the EU has committed to increase its gross funding for Belarus from EUR 4 million to EUR 15.6 million for the period 2011 – 2013.

At the conference, Štefan Füle, the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, stated that the EU aid will assist the Belarusian NGOs, independent media and students who have been constant targets of the repressive regime. Specific support was announced for the so-called “exile university”, which has been based in Vilnius since 2006 and is known formally as the European Humanities University (EHU) (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, March 2006). Here, the European Commission has pledged to

• donate an annual EUR 1 million until 2013 to the EHU Trust Fund, the main donor channel for the EHU;
• provide scholarships and promote student mobility and exchanges between education institutions from Belarus and the EU by way of Erasmus Mundus and Tempus programmes.

Alongside the Commission's pledge, the Nordic Council of Ministers donated EUR 20 000 to the EHU Emergency Fund, the main functions of which are to cover additional costs of the EHU caused by accepting students expelled from Belarusian state universities for political reasons and to provide such students with scholarships.

European Humanities University Trust Fund

European Commission