Background
The European Union was undertakeing a fundamental restructuring of the European
Commission's services dealing with external relations. Four former European Commissioners - in charge of six
external relations services - used to share responsibility in the area of external relations and the
management of external aid and formally set up a EuropeAid Co-operation Office on 1 January 2001.
The EuropeAid Co-operation Office back then was supervised by a Board comprising Chris Patten,
Commissioner for External Relation, Poul Nielson, former Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid,
Günther Verheugen, former Commissioner for Enlargement, Pascal Lamy, former Commissioner for Trade, and Pedro Solbes Mira,
former Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs co-ordinating and managing its external aid and relations
to non-EU member countries.
The EuropeAid Co-Operation office: New regional and horizontal institutional programmes-
The Asia-Link Programme
The Asia-Link programme which was adopted by the Commission in October 2000
will encourage and develop networking links between higher education institutions in Europe and Asia.
The Asia-Link Programme is an initiative by the European Commission to promote regional and multilateral
networking between higher education institutions in EU Member States and South Asia, South-East Asia and China.
Development of a curriculum "Standardization in Companies and Markets"
The Asia-Link programme contains the so called Partnership Projects,
for which Wilfried Hesser applied in order to get funding in the field of curriculum development.
The overall objectives are the development of new/improved courses, modules and materials in the field
of standardisation. The first call for proposals, for the duration of the whole of 2002 and 2003 incorporated
about 240 proposals sent to the EuropeAid Co-operation Office in Brussels. About 154 (64%) proposals were
considered eligible and only 42 proposals (17,5%) were selected, and Wilfried Hesser being one of the successful ones.
|
