Press Release: Combating digital illiteracy, promoting virtual campuses and virtual twinning of schools: the e-learning programme’s aims (2004-2006)

The European Commission adopted a proposal for a programme on the use of new information and communication technologies (NICT) to improve the quality of and access to education and training (e-learning), on 19 December 2002. This programme, which the Commission hopes will have a budget of 36 million euros over three years, comes in response to calls from the European Councils in Lisbon, Stockholm and Barcelona to integrate NICT better into education and training both to foster social cohesion and enable the European Union to become the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010.