KA220 Cooperation Partnerships under Key Action 2: Cooperation for Partnerships

KA220 Cooperation Partnerships provide participating organizations/institutions with opportunities to gain experience in international collaboration, strengthen their capacities, expand and enhance their partnership networks, and produce high-quality, innovative outputs. Projects carried out under this activity aim to develop, transfer, and/or implement innovative practices while fostering cooperation, peer learning, and experience exchange at the European level.

Cooperation Partnerships are projects that aim to support the development, transfer, and/or implementation of innovative practices at institutional, local, regional, national, or European levels.

Projects in this area enable institutions/organizations operating in school education, vocational education and training, adult education, higher education, and youth fields to establish transnational cooperation partnerships, develop joint networks at the European level, strengthen their internationalization capacities, develop new practices and methods, and share good practices and ideas.

Project results are expected to be reusable, transferable, scalable, and, if possible, have a strong interdisciplinary dimension, as well as be shared at local, regional, national, and transnational levels.

Cooperation Partnerships Aim to:

• Improve the quality of work, activities, and practices of relevant organizations and institutions while opening up to new actors not naturally included in a specific sector;
• Build the transnational and cross-sectoral working capacity of organizations;
• Address common needs and priorities in the fields of education, training, youth, and sports;
• Drive transformation and change (at individual, organizational, or sectoral levels) that lead to improvements and new approaches in proportion to each organization's context.

Cooperation Partnerships projects must address at least one horizontal and/or at least one sectoral priority.

Horizontal Priorities:

These include inclusion, digital transformation, environment and combating climate change, common values, and civic participation. They apply to all sectors.

Who Can Apply?

Applications are institutional. Any public or private organization with legal entity status, established in an EU Member State or a Program Country, that has been active for at least two years in the fields of education, training, youth, sports, and other socio-economic sectors, can apply. This organization submits the application to the National Agency in its country on behalf of all participating partner institutions.

Only one application can be submitted with the same partners during the same call period.

For all KA220 projects submitted to National Agencies (except for higher education) in the fields of school education, vocational education, adult education, and youth, the same organization (with one OID) can participate as an applicant or a partner in a maximum of 10 KA220 projects until the final application deadline.

Eligible Organizations:

Cooperation Partnerships offer an opportunity for public or private legal entities from the fields of education, training, youth, sports, and other socio-economic sectors. Examples include:

• Higher education institutions, schools/institutes/education centers, NGOs, SMEs, public institutions at local/regional/national levels, chambers of commerce, industry/trade/professional associations, unions, research institutes, foundations, businesses/companies, libraries, museums, and institutions/organizations that recognize/validate knowledge, skills, and competencies gained through non-formal and informal learning.

Special Eligibility Criteria for Organizations:

• The applicant organization must have been legally established at least two years before the final application deadline.
• All participating organizations in the partnership must have legal entity status.
• All participating organizations must upload documents proving their legal status to the Organisation Registration System. (See: "How to complete registration before applying?")
• Higher education institutions in Program Countries must have an "Erasmus Charter for Higher Education (ECHE)."

ECHE applications are submitted annually to the Executive Agency of the European Commission in Brussels. For detailed information on the ECHE call for proposals:
https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/resources-and-tools/erasmus-charter-for-higher-education

How Are Partners Selected?

All institutions/organizations participating in the partnership must be identified at the application stage.

Depending on the priorities and objectives of the project, Cooperation Partnerships should include partners with suitable qualifications, numbers, and diversity to leverage different experiences, profiles, and expertise and produce high-quality project results.

A Cooperation Partnership project must have at least three partners from three different Program Countries.

There is no maximum limit to the number of participating organizations in a partnership.

If the specific partnership requirements outlined in the Program Guide are met, multiple institutions from the same country can be included in the same project.