Erasmus+ Rising Proposals, Falling Success Rates

In episode #203 of The Grant I sit down with Roberto Zanon (co-director of Solvere) to unpack what’s really happening behind Erasmus+ success rates. Roberto has gone through national agency and centralised call statistics and the pattern is clear: in just a few years, success rates have dropped dramatically, with some calls now in single digits and flagship VET actions projected around 5%. We explore why it’s suddenly so much harder to get funded — from NGO sustainability crises and “proposal business models” to Covid-era online consortia and the explosion of AI-assisted writing.

We then look at the consequences for everyone using Erasmus+: overwhelmed national agencies, underpaid evaluators, inconsistent assessments that can feel like a lottery, and growing inequality between countries with very different capacities and success rates. Finally we ask what could be done differently: better training for evaluators in logical framework/theory of change, smarter and consistent use of AI on the evaluation side, more flexible programme management (including caps, two-stage calls and real stakeholder dialogue) — and why well-motivated, grounded projects still stand a better chance than purely money-driven ones.