Eduardo González
The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has announced the MAEC-AECID Scholarship Program for the training of young Spaniards in the period 2023-2024, with a total amount of 2.5 million euros.
The call, signed last April 25 by the director of the AECID. Antón Leis, and published last Thursday in the Official State Gazette (BOE), is part of the MAEC-AECID scholarship and assistantship programs, now in its seventy-sixth edition, and is part of the initiatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Directorate of Cultural and Scientific Relations (DRCC) of the AECID, to train young Spaniards.
The objective of the call is to grant aid for the training of young Spaniards in the areas of development cooperation in AECID’s Technical Cooperation Offices and Training Centers (COOPERATION Program), in cultural management and scientific diplomacy in the foreign network of diplomatic representations and cultural centers (CULT Program) and in European affairs at the College of Europe (COE Program).
In the case of the COOPERATION Program, the objective is to grant training scholarships in development cooperation management at AECID’s Technical Cooperation Offices and Training Centers in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Philippines. The training will take place in one of the destinations and the applicant must express his/her preference for one of the three geographical areas of destination: French-speaking Africa (five places), non-French-speaking Africa, the Middle East and the Philippines (eleven places); and Latin America (25 places). The training period will run from November 1, 2023 to July 31, 2024.
The beneficiaries must have Spanish nationality, a maximum age of 29 years (as of December 31, 2023), hold a postgraduate master’s degree in areas related to development cooperation or international relations, have language skills and not have been the beneficiary of an AECID grant in previous calls for a period equal to or greater than six months, nor have enjoyed, in the two years prior to this call, a public grant from ICEX, Ministry of Culture or Instituto Cervantes to carry out a training experience abroad.
The objective of the CULT Program is to grant training scholarships for the specialties of Cultural Management and Scientific Diplomacy. Beneficiaries must be no more than 27 years of age and meet the same requirements as in the COOPERATION Program. The destinations are, for the Cultural Management specialty, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, Europe and North America, United Kingdom and Latin America; and, for the Scientific Diplomacy specialty, United Kingdom and other destinations.
As regards the COE Program, the objective is to award ten scholarships to young Spanish graduates to pursue a master’s degree in one of the specialties or areas of study offered by the College of Europe: European Economic Studies (ECO), European Law (LAW), Political Studies and European Governance (POL), International Relations and Diplomatic Studies (IRD), all at the Bruges Campus (Belgium), and European Interdisciplinary Studies (EIS), at the Natolin Campus in Poland. The training period for this call runs from September 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024. The upper age limit is also 27 years and admission to the Master’s program at the College of Europe is also required.
The College of Europe is the oldest center for European studies in the world (it was created in 1949 on the initiative, among others, of the Spanish thinker Salvador de Madariaga). Spain, as a member country of the European Union, is a member of the Board of Governors of the College of Europe through its permanent representative ambassador to the European Union. Spanish politician Íñigo Méndez de Vigo was president of the Board of Trustees for ten years, between 2009 and 2019. The College of Europe has two campuses in Bruges, founded in 1949, and in the Natolin Palace in Warsaw, established in 1992.
Total amount
The total amount of the call for grants is 2,571,432.00 euros, which will be divided into 758,334 euros for the 2023 fiscal year and 1,813,098 euros for the 2024 fiscal year. Besides, an additional amount of up to 500,000 euros is fixed, whose application to the granting of subsidies will not require a new call for applications and whose effectiveness will be conditioned to the availability of credit.
By far the largest allocation will correspond to the CULT Program, which will receive 306,028 euros in 2023 and 1,048,884 in 2024, for a total of 1,354,912 euros over the two years, followed by the COOPERATION Program, with 969,320 euros (339,026 in 2023 and 630,294 in 2024), and the COE Program, which will receive 247,200 euros (113,280 in 2023 and 133,920 in 2024). Scholarships may be applied for between May 4 and 19, for the COOPERATION Program; between May 9 and 24, for the CULT Program; and between May 22 and June 2, for the COE Program.
