The European Commission has announced the new Programme Guide for the "Youth in Action" Programme 2012, in which the rules for project aplications for the year have been presented. Some of the changes are quite significant...

The financing rules of Action 1.1., 4.3. and 3.1. will undergo a revolution, where the current categories such as the "preparation costs", "activitiy costs" or "costs of dissemination of results" will be all brought to a single "Project costs" category calculated by the scale of unit costs. In action Training& Networking project the costs of "Training measures" will also be included in this category. As well as the sending, hosting and coordination costs for Action 2.

This change will on one hand make it much easier to calculate the financing, but on the other it will make the good co-operation between partners much more important and sometimes difficult, as the partners will need to agree on how much money they will receive.

Travels costs and exceptional costs remain a separate category and did not change.

Another important change is the rise of the role of the Eastern Partnership in the Programme. From 2012 Eastern Partnership countries will be able to apply for funding similar to the South-East European countries. Their applications can be sent to the The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency in Brussels. Also in Actions 2. and 3.1. additional money will be given from projects operating within the "Eastern Partnership Youth Window".

These are just some of the most significant changes in the Programme. If you are planning to apply to the Programme, or get to know more of the changes you can download the guide here: http://ec.europa.eu/youth/documents/programme-guide-2012_en.pdf