Socrates programme

The Socrates Programme was an educational initiative of the European Commission in which 31 countries took part. The initial programme ran from 1994 until 31 December 1999, when it was replaced by Socrates II on 24 January 2000, which ran until 2006. That was in turn replaced by the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007 to 2013. Participants were the then 25 European Union member countries, the then candidate countries Romania and Bulgaria, and Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Turkey. The programme is named after the Greek philosopher Socrates. It is a predecessor of the later Lifelong Learning Programme and, through it, of Erasmus+.