The aim of what follows is to provide some starting-points for an interim appraisal of the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, commonly known as the ERASMUS Programme, at what seems likely to be regarded in future as a turning-point in the development of higher education co-operation centred upon the European Community [1]. There is no doubt that, in terms of the objectives which were set for Phase I of the Programme, it may fairly be said that by the end of 1989 ERASMUS had, in relation to the resources available to it, developed its maximum potential both quantitatively and qualitatively, continuing to attract the interest and participation of growing numbers of staff and students in universities and other higher education institutions throughout the Community. The fact that the Programme supported almost 5000 inter-university co-operation agreements involving the mobility of almost 80,000 students over the four years of its existence alone sufEces to make the point. While these outcomes have conErmed and consolidated the success of the Programme, it is also clear that simply to continue along the paths already marked out may not be an adequate response either to the dynamic condition which ERASMUS has helped to determine within higher education in the EEC, or to the challenges now implicit in the wider European situation as it is now developing. Events in late 1989 and the Erst weeks of 1990 have indeed already served to highlight the urgency with which the EEC needs not only to proceed with the building of the Internal Market, with all that its construction implies for the development of greater economic, social and cultural cohesion among existing Member States, but also to adapt to changing, and perhaps countervailing, geographical and political perspectives. The Community now faces the paradoxical necessity for internal consolidation and, simultaneously, for acceptance of the external challenges posed both by closer relations with EFTA countries and by the decision to offer realistic assistance to the democratising countries of Eastern Europe. Within these vital historical processes, education co-operation, particularly in the university and advanced technological spheres, is likely to acquire new horizons and new parameters of activity, since it possesses the political attractiveness of being a high-proEle and rapidly mobilisable resource for the transformation of mentalities and the promotion of new values needed to confront the changing situation of the continent and concept of Europe. The example of the early success of the ERASMUS Programme and the models of co-operation for which it has created the opportunity are thus bound to play a significant role in the formulation of policies for fostering the inter-institutional co-operation in higher education which will be needed to channel