Ploteus

PLOTEUS is an acronym of Portal on Learning Opportunities Throughout European Space, meant to connote πλωτηρ (ploter) which means "navigator" in ancient Greek.

[4] According to France 5, the portal offers an "easy access" to an "excellent source of information" from primary school to postgraduate education.

[16] The project was initiated in 2001,[17] further to the conclusions of the Lisbon and Stockholm European Councils (March 2000 and March 2001),[18][19] as part of the Bologna process,[20] with the purpose to put into effect the right to freedom of movement for European citizens by providing the necessary information on learning opportunities called for by the Conclusions of the 2000 Lisbon Council and making national service inter-operable throughout Europe.

[31] It also provided practical help on matters such as finding a place to stay, living costs, the legal aspects of studying abroad, taxes, and social security[32] as well as facilitating exchange programmes and the process of moving from one Member State to another.

[41] Nevertheless, according to a paper published in 2006, though "laudable in its aims to help citizens find out information about studying in Europe", the PLOTEUS portal "presents learners with a bewildering assortment of learning opportunities, each leading the enquirer to the vagaries of providers' websites [and] none of the information offered to learners is standardised or predictable, making it difficult to determine which goals can be reached by which routes".

[7] In order to interconnect national databases in the European portal, a common protocol was developed by member states,[44] using clusterpoint.

In 2010, its promotion was incorporated in the Youth on the Move campaign launched by the European Commission to extend opportunities for learning mobility to all young people in Europe by 2020.