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Erasmus+

Erasmus glossary: what every acronym actually means

Half the paperwork of the programme is in acronyms, and not knowing what a Transcript of Records is, is exactly what makes people sign a form without reading it. Each entry gives the term as it appears in the documents.

Data updated on 19 August 2026
A-Z

Erasmus glossary: what every acronym actually means

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Academic Coordinator
The academic responsible for approving course equivalences for your degree. They decide whether a course abroad counts for one at home, and therefore they are the ones who sign the academic side of the Learning Agreement.
ApplicationApplication
The request you submit yourself, once nominated, to the host university, with your documents: transcript, language proof and sometimes a motivation letter or portfolio. It has its own deadline, later than the nomination one.
Blended Intensive ProgrammeBIP
A short, intensive programme run jointly by several universities, with a few days on site and a part online. It awards ECTS credits and does not consume the 12 months of long mobility in your study cycle.
Blended Mobility
A mobility combining a short physical period abroad with a virtual part. It was introduced to open the programme to people who cannot spend a whole semester away because of work, caring duties or cost.
Certificate of Attendance
The form the host university signs with your real arrival and departure dates. It determines how many months of grant get paid, which is why those dates have to match the ones in the Grant Agreement.
Diploma SupplementDS
The document attached to your degree certificate setting out your full academic path, mobility included. It is what proves to a foreign employer what exactly you studied and within which system.
Erasmus Charter for Higher EducationECHE
The accreditation the European Commission grants a university, without which it cannot take part in Erasmus+. It commits the institution to concrete things: charging no tuition to exchange students and recognising the credits agreed in the Learning Agreement.
Erasmus Code
The unique identifier of each institution within the programme, in the form E MADRID03. It appears on agreements and forms, and exists so that two similarly named universities in the same city are never confused.
Erasmus Student NetworkESN
The network of student volunteer associations that welcome Erasmus students in each city: arrival, activities and, in practice, the first real source of information on flats, transport and local paperwork. It is a student network, not an official Commission service.
Erasmus Without PaperEWP
The network that connects European universities' own systems so that mobility paperwork — nominations, learning agreements, records — travels between institutions without paper or email.
European Credit Transfer and Accumulation SystemECTS
The common unit measuring the workload of a course across Europe. The reference is 60 credits per academic year and 30 per semester. It is what lets a course passed in Poland count in Spain without comparing syllabuses hour by hour.
European Health Insurance CardEHIC
The card giving you the healthcare you need during a temporary stay in another EU country on the same terms as a resident. It is not travel insurance: it covers neither repatriation nor private treatment.
Grant Agreement
The contract between you and your home university fixing the amount of the grant, the dates of the stay and both parties' obligations. It is signed before you leave and it is the condition for receiving the first payment.
Inter-Institutional AgreementIIA
The bilateral agreement between two universities that creates the exchange places for a given field of study, with a number of places and a language level. It is what decides where you can actually go, and it is in no public database: your international office has it.
International Office
The service at each university that runs mobility: calls, nominations, agreements and signatures. It is the contact for everything administrative, and its email address is the detail this catalogue publishes on every profile.
Learning AgreementLA
The three-signature contract — student, home university and host university — setting out which courses you will take abroad and which ones they will count for at home. It is the document that turns a semester abroad into recognised credits: without all three signatures, nobody is obliged to recognise anything you pass.
National Agency
The body running Erasmus+ in each country, which sets, among other things, the grant amounts for its own outgoing students. In Spain it is SEPIE, in Germany the DAAD, in France the Agence Erasmus+ France. It is the right source for anything to do with money.
NominationNomination
The act by which your home university formally tells the host university that it has selected you. It comes before the application and it is done by the institution, not by you. Its deadline is the one that really cuts you off: without a nomination no application is accepted, even if that window is still open.
Online Learning AgreementOLA
The digital version of the Learning Agreement, filled in and signed at learning-agreement.eu instead of on paper. Part of the digitalisation of Erasmus+. Universities have adopted it at very different speeds.
Transcript of RecordsToR
The document the host university issues at the end of the stay, listing the courses taken, the ECTS credits and the marks. It is the evidence your home university uses to grant recognition, and without it the Learning Agreement is left half done.
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Where this data comes from

Deadlines, contacts and cost-of-living figures come from the European Commission's Erasmus+ App, harvested on 19 August 2026 and reused under the CC BY 4.0 licence (Decision 2011/833/EU). go-erasmus is not affiliated with the European Commission or the Erasmus+ programme.