Asian students will have greater opportunities to study at European universities after a student grants programme was expanded this week.
Under the second phase of the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus programme, more funding will be earmarked for non-European students to study in Europe.
From 2004 to 2008, the Erasmus Mundus programmes offered more than 6,000 scholarships to students to study at European institutions and more than 1,000 scholarships to academics to contribute to master's courses in teaching and research activities.
In the past two decades, more than 1.5 million European students have studied at a European institution outside their home country under the scheme.
The EU has allocated Euro950 million (HK$9.3 billion) for the scheme over the next four years, an increase from the Euro609 million allocated from 2004 to 2008.
The European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Jan Figel, said: 'We are now able to expand the scope to include doctoral level studies and more generous grants will be made available for European students to study at participating higher education institutions outside the EU, making the two-way exchange of the world's best students and academic staff a reality under the programme.'
The second phase of the programme, which was launched in Brussels on Monday, comprises two elements.