The Eurodyssey programme changed Presidency in a hand over from the Azores to Île-de-France. Ile-de-France will take the programme’s Presidency and secretariat from July 2013 on.

Vasco Cordeiro, President of the Azores (P) region, underlined that: “Eurodyssey, a leading professional youth mobility programme, has been for nearly 30 years the most emblematic programme of our organisation, inspiring other mobility programmes, which were created since then – Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, EURES”.

Michèle Sabban, Vice-president of Île-de-France (F) region, set her goals for this two-year mandate: “My priority will be to continue the constructive dialogue initiated with Mr Barroso. Eurodyssey will contribute to the youth initiative of the European Commission and I am confident that we will manage to increase significantly the number of Eurodyssey beneficiaries, enabling more young people to get work experience across European regions.”

Eurodyssey is getting prepared for its new Presidency and the Forum 2013

The members of the Eurodyssey Steering Committee met on 15 May in Paris 2013, on the eve of the AER General assembly and the official handover ceremony from Azores to Île-de-France.  Further to preparing the transition period, they discussed the development of the programme membership in a time of economic crisis as well as the criteria for becoming part of the Committee itself.

An inquiry will be made among the members to overview the trainees’ age categories accepted according to the regions, and to distinguish regions accepting candidates throughout the year from those working by sessions or those admitting spontaneous applications.

The programme of the annual Forum on 17-18 October 2013 in Ajaccio, Corse (FR) has been finalised and will be sent shortly, together with an official invitation.

Eurodyssey is an exchange programme of the AER which allows young job seekers aged between 18 and 30 to benefit from a traineeship placement abroad for a period of three to seven months.