Agencija za mobilnost i programe Europske unije: The Croatian National Agency Text: Marcus Klein (March 2020) Some Background Information Early and Later Developments Croatia is a relative latecomer to the European Un- ion’s various education, mobility, and cooperation programmes. It was only in 2009, while accession negotiations with the EU were already well under way, that Croatia became a programme country (the 32nd at the time, to be precise). It was then that the country joined the Lifelong Learning Pro- gramme (LLP) as well as the Youth in Action (YiA) Programme, both of which had started two years before and would run until the end of 2013. Then, as now, the Agencija za mobilnost i pro- grame Europske unije (AMEUP, Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes), a Zagreb-based public institu- tion founded in 2007, was responsible for the ad- ministration of these EU programmes and their suc- cessors; it was and is, thus, the sole National Agency (NA). AMEUP also has always managed a plethora of multilateral and bilateral programmes. Currently, it implements and promotes Horizon 2020 and co- ordinates, inter alia, the European Solidarity Corps, eTwinning, Europass, Euroguidance, Eurodesk, Eury- dice, ECVET (European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training), CEEPUS (Central European Exchange Program for University Studies), bilateral agreements and, of course, Erasmus+ (since 2014). Running so many different programmes poses something of an organisational challenge for AME- UP and its 90 employees, slightly more than half of whom work on Erasmus+, as Antonija Gladović, the director of the Croatian NA, concedes. At the same time, as she also points out, "having all these pro- grammes in the same National Agency enriches the knowledge and practices of the NA staff, provides us with many opportunities to develop synergies and offers a single-entry point for our (potential) beneficiaries". The many positive aspects outweigh, in other words, possible issues. When Croatian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) began to participate in LLP 11 years ago, at first only outgoing mobilities were carried out. Very soon, however, they began to take full advantage of the programme’s possibilities and also hosted incoming students, whose number has grown gradually over the years. In fact, incoming students now outnum- ber out-going ones. In the academic year 2017/18, for instance, there were 2,485 incoming students compared to 2,013 outgoing students from both programme (KA103) and partner countries (KA107). Regarding Erasmus+, Croatian HEIs were initial- ly somewhat cautious when it came to the various cooperation projects, especially in the role of ap- plicants. Over time, though, as they gained more experience, Croatian institutions started to apply for Strategic Partnerships in different educational fields, not least higher education. Their participa- tion in centralised cooperation projects also in- creased. Three Croatian HEIs are participating in the European Universities Initiative,1 and many more are interested in applying in future calls. Broad Impacts Despite its relatively short history, the overall im- pact of Erasmus on Croatian HE is difficult to ex- aggerate. The programme is, as Antonija Gladović makes clear, "by far the most important source of funding for the internationalisation of higher ed- ucation in Croatia", with other schemes such CEE- PUS and bilateral scholarships trailing behind. As such, Erasmus "has both boosted the numbers of mobile individuals like no other mobility scheme before – amongst students as well as teaching and non-teaching staff – and offered Croatian HEIs new ways of international cooperation under project rules which are and were relatively simple com- pared to other programmes and funds". Therefore, it should come as no surprise that all but two Croa- tian HEIs are Erasmus Charter for Higher Education (ECHE) holders. 19