How can institutions truly transform to deliver seamless, digital-first mobility experiences, and what will it take to turn the European Student Card Initiative (ESCI) into a catalyst for smarter processes, empowered learners, and a fully connected European education ecosystem?

Encompassing three pillars – Erasmus Without Paper (EWP), the European Student Card (ESC) and the Erasmus+ App – ESCI supports both institutional transformation and student agency by simplifying administrative processes and enhancing digitalisation in Erasmus+ mobility exchanges, whether in-person, blended or fully online.

Launched in 2017, ESCI has become a flagship initiative for the digitalisation of the Erasmus+ programme in higher education, with over 60% of Learning Agreements exchanged digitally and over 3,600 higher education institutions exchanging student data through EWP, and more than 4.5 million ESCs issued to date.

To prepare the ground for the 2028-2034 Erasmus+ programme, the European Commission ran a large-scale consultation in the first half of 2026 to gather input from across the European higher education and student community on the future evolution of the initiative and its ecosystem.

The consultation, organised by NTT DATA for EACEA on behalf of the European Commission, consisted of a large-scale survey combined with targeted in-person focus groups and online consultation workshops with a range of ESCI stakeholders, from HEIs implementing EWP and ESC, Digital Officers within National Authorities and Erasmus+ National Agencies, third-party providers, and students as end users and beneficiaries of the overall Initiative.

The preliminary results of this consultation will be presented to the ESCI community during a dedicated event organised by the European Commission in Brussels mid-June. The 2026 EDEN Annual Conference in Porto is thus the perfect forum to ensure that the results of this consultation reach a broader audience, to further enhance student mobility in the coming years.