As announced in previous events and email communication, EASY will follow the Roadmap announced by the European Commission about the implementation of the Erasmus Without Paper (EWP) ecosystem, that will happen progressively:
2021 – Learning Agreement
2022 – Interinstitutional Agreements
2023 – Nominations
2024 – Transcript of Records

Each institution is identified in the EWP network by a unique SCHAC code, which is the website domain of the main university/academy the institution belongs to. For each SCHAC only one way of accessing the components listed above is allowed. EWP is exploring ways to let faculty nodes have access to the network independently, but this is yet not possible. In order to avoid duplucates, the profile of EASY internal institutions belonging to universities with more faculties sharing the same SCHAC code but using different systems has been disconnected unless all faculties communicated their will to use EASY.

This year these universities need to choose one single access point to the Learning Agreement. EASY internal institutions in this situation can still use the EASY system for the management of their applications. Only the way of processing the Learning Agreement should be decided at university level.

The National Agencies have communicated the date of June 1st for the connection of Learning Agreement tools of external providers (like ours) or, alternatively, for the use of OLA. Please note that this date is not a deadline, but the start of this digitisation process. The period 1st June 2021- 31st August 2022 will be a trial/adaptation period for all higher education institutions to join the digitisation of the Learning Agreement, but the real, hard deadline to be 100% ready and functioning is 1st September 2022. This is the correct interpretation of the dates communicated by the National Agencies, which have been advised by the European Commission to push for the 1st June date in order to make sure that institutions do not postpone their digital shift.

The EASY’s Learning Agreement tool will be adapted to the new LA template by August 2021 and will be ready to be tested and used by EASY users as of September for the new academic year. On 24th September we will organize our yearly EASY webinar, which will dedicate an in-depth session to the new Learning Agreement. Information on the actual way of functioning of the new Learning Agreement at this point is purely theoretical and based on the main principles of the EWP network that say that “each institution will be able to use their own tools, as long as they are connected to each other via the EWP protocols”. Therefore, more details on how to handle Learning Agreements will be found out when we will actually start working with the new settings.

Please note that the connection of the Interinstitutional Agreement is scheduled for 2022 but as EASY does not have this component, EASY users will have to fill in their Inter Institutional Agreements (IIAs) from the EU Dashboard. This has been confirmed by EWP.

For all other matters regarding EWP that go beyond our competence, such as the Student Identification Number (ESI – ESCI), the use of the EU Dashboard for the IIAs and the digitisation of other Erasmus components not mentioned above, please refer to your Erasmus National Agency.

29 Jun 2021