Programme Tempus (Tempus — Trans-European Mobility Programme for University Studies) — is a programme of EU external support. It supports the modernisation of higher education in the Partner Countries of EU, mainly through university cooperation projects.

Tempus provides financial support to encourage university (Partner Countries and EU countries) interaction and balanced cooperation.

The program is annually competitive, meaning that grants are given based on the Calls for proposals and multi-level assessment of submitted applications in a predefined format.

Tempus funds inter-university cooperation in the field of curriculum development and advancement, university management, scientists and civil society interaction, education and business partnership and also structural reformation in higher education institutions.

Tempus programme was coordinated by the European Commission Directorates for Education and Culture, broadening and external help till 2009.

Starting with the second competition of the fourth Tempus stage this function is implemented by European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (Executive Agency) that has European Commission mandate for the programmes’ projects management and coordination.

Tempus is the longest programme, its first stage started in 1990: Tempus I — 1990-1994; Tempus II — 1994–1998; Tempus IIіbis — 1998–2000; Tempus III — 2000-2006. A new programme stage started in 2007 — Tempus IV (2007–2013). Tempus was based on the “bottom-up approach” at the initiative of the universities. Call for the application is annual, usually in spring or summer.

Since 2014–2020 EU Erasmus+, a new educational programme was opened which included Capacity Building in Higher Education (ex-Tempus) direction.

More about Tempus here.

Karazin University in the Tempus program