The Erasmus Program for Young Entrepreneurs is an initiative crafted by the European Commission to foster international collaboration, enrich entrepreneural competences and stimulate innovation.
The programme offers aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop and nurture their own competences, being able to tranform innovative ideas into reality. This is made possible due to the collaboration with a foreign hosting entrepreneur lasting a period ranging from 1 to 6 months. This experience allows young entrepreneurs to overcome the initial obstacles during the first delicate phases of business creation and management, as well as facilitating the internationalization of SMEs and the ideation of business partnerships.
The foreign hosting entrepreneurs, experts in their field, also benefit from such an experience due to the additional competences and prospects brought forward by the aspiring entrepreneurs. For instance, this collaboration allows for the flow and exploration of new ideas that can innovate and grow their own businesses, as well as facilitating their internationalization, their access to new markets and the ideation of new partnerships which will ultimately increase their competitive advantage.
Nowadays, the program has created almost 12.000 exchanges in more than 45 countries. In 2023, there were a striking 5.000 applications, demonstrating the stellar success of the iniciative. The program EYE has a very positive consensus with 98% of reccomendations by new entrepreneurs and 92% of the participants maintaining their contracts even after their exchange was completed.
FILSE acts as the coordinator of the Columbus intermediary organizations. They are composed of 10 active stakeholders within the domain of business creation in Lithuania, Slovenia, Denmark, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Portugal, France, Spain and Turkey. FILSE is the intermediary organization located in Liguria, acting on the National territory and working hard to create matches between entrepreneus since the first edition of the program: since 2009, more than 150 exchanges were recorded and facilitated by FILSE.
If you’re thinking of starting your own business or you’re a young, successful entrepreneur with an interest in new markets and innovative ideas, contact us at the following address:
