European Schoolnet EUN (www.eun.org) is a joint initiative between 20 Ministries of Education in the European Union, the European Association of Free Exchange (EAFE) and countries in Central and Eastern Europe. This project benefits from the financial and political support of the European Commission.
The creation of this project goes back to March 1997 when the Ministers of Education of the European Union and the European Commission agreed to support a Swedish proposal which came under the European action plan entitled "Learning within the information society". European Schoolnet was officially launched in September 1998 after a formal agreement between the partners was adopted in Lisbon, in June 1998.
The decision-making body of the EUN is the steering committee, comprising one representative from each of the ministries taking part. Day to day management of the EUN is carried out by the EUN Office located in Brussels.
The financial resources come from contributions from Ministries of Education. The European Commission plays a big part in the financing via a large number of special projects developed within the framework of educational or research and development programmes specific to the European Union.
The EUN is responsible for two key tasks:
1. Setting up a virtual multilingual European campus for learning and cooperation between schools which will act as a gateway to the national or regional school telecommunication networks and to the teaching resource centres associated with them.
2. The establishment of a European network for innovation and exchange of information within the field of new information and communication technologies (NTIC).
