The European Commission has proposed increasing its budget for education, media, culture and youth programmes by 186%.

Education and Culture Commissioners Viviane Reding and Dalia Grybauskaite made the announcement in Brussels on Thursday, outlining spending proposals for 2007-2013.

In total, 16 billion euro has been earmarked for the seven year period.

The education programme – which comprises exchange programmes Comenius for schools, Erasmus for higher education, Leonardo da Vinci For vocational training and Grundtvig for adult education – takes the largest share of the funding by far, at 13.6 billion euros.

Often cited as one of the EU’s most successful policy, the Commission says it wants to see three million Erasmus students by 2011.

In total education will get a funding increase of 246%.

Youth, media and culture programmes will see more modest increases in funding.