Please note that the European Voluntary Service (EVS) as a brand is discontinued. From January 2018, Erasmus+ Volunteering Activities replaced EVS in the Erasmus+ Programme Guide.

The corrigendum to the Erasmus+ Programme Guide and Call for Proposals for 2018 indicates important changes to the Youth part of the programme. That is that the European Solidarity Corps volunteering activities are brought back into the Erasmus+ programme for the 2018 Call, affecting youth volunteering projects under Key Action 1. This effectively means it will be ‘business as usual’ for organisations which would have previously applied for this activity under the European Voluntary Service (EVS), both for Programme countries and Partner countries. In the second half of this year, after the adoption of the European Solidarity Corps legal framework, the situation will be re-assessed with the objective to ensure no overlap between the both schemes.

However, an important change was introduced in terms of selection of volunteers. For activities within Programme Countries, organisations must select their volunteers from the European Solidarity Corps database. For activities taking place in Partner countries the participants don't need to be registered in the database.

An online tool called the Placement Administration and Support System (PASS) enables organisations to search and contact those young people. Organisations already holding an EVS accreditation have automatic access to the tool, along with their access to the European Youth Portal's volunteering database. New organisations must first be authorised under one of the EU programmes linked to the European Solidarity Corps. For more information about these programmes, visit the European Solidarity Corps information page for organisations.