The University of Pisa has taken a key role in promoting European mobility since the first years of the Erasmus Programme, when it was a member of the ECTS Pilot Project. As a prestigious international university, whose role is that of promoting and enhancing the elaboration and transfer of knowledge at a level of excellence in an international framework, the University of Pisa has supported and participated not only in Erasmus mobility programmes since 1989, but also in Erasmus centralised actions and projects including Intensive Programmes, Curriculum Development programmes, Thematic and Academic Networks.

The University of Pisa is deeply committed to continuing this strategy and developing it further in the future phases of Erasmus. It salutes the opening of Erasmus to the wider world as an opportunity to coordinate and develop mobility between Europe and the world's other macro-regions, and to improve the tools that ensure the quality of that mobility. It has been since 2000 one of the promoters of the Tuning Process, in Europe, Latin America, Russia, Georgia and it is represented on the Tuning Management. At present it coordinates, from a scientific and academic point of view, the large-scale TuCAHEA Tempus Structural Measures project, which aims to create a Central Asian Higher Education Area aligned with the EHEA.

a) Partners: Its mobility partners have been chosen in several ways: as in most universities, through Erasmus, Socrates and the Erasmus LLP programme, some partnerships with like-minded universities have developed on the basis of personal links of professors and researchers who have wished to add a staff and/or student mobility dimension to their existing cooperation. Often however key partnerships have been established as a result of the shared commitment to the various networks and large-scale European projects which the University of Pisa has coordinated or been a partner of. Mobility partners are screened in practice for their correct and 'virtuous' use of ECTS. This has allowed the University of Pisa to build up through its many bilateral agreement a network of trusted Erasmus partners, in which all eligible countries are represented. Often this network is the result of the extension to new subject areas of existing agreements which have proved positive and of interest to the students.

b) Geographic areas: The University of Pisa began its Erasmus experience in the late '80s in the then context of 11 countries. At each opportunity to increase the number of partners in the Erasmus framework it has done so, first in western then in eastern and central Europe, and more recently in Turkey and with the newly eligible Balkan partners. At the same time, during the last two decades, it has developed its network of scientific and mobility agreements well beyond the countries eligible for Erasmus. Its geographic strategy has emphasized particularly some work regions, although agreements have been made for cooperation in research and teaching with other countries as well. In addition to its pan-European network of partners, it has emphasized partnerships with Latin America, China, Central Asia, North Africa and the United States. It has Erasmus Mundus partners in Africa, Asia, North-South America.These partnerships will form a basis for developments in the future Erasmus programme.

c) Objectives and target groups: The present Erasmus mobility has as its objective that of making it possible for all students (and professors) to engage in mobility if they wish, and to remove barriers to full use of the opportunities offered by Erasmus. In a large generalist university such as the university of Pisa, the strategy is not to give priority to any one disciplinary area or category of students, but rather to coordinate and extend the good practice established in the areas that have proved particularly active in Erasmus to the other subject areas. The subject areas of Humanities, Engineering, Natural, Social and Applied Sciences have consolidated particularly successful mobility programmes, for both the first and the second cycles. The key objectives are:

• To increase the incoming and outgoing student and staff mobility in the subject areas/departments where it is currently less develope.
• To increase the number of programmes taught in English, particularly in the scientific and technological are.
• To build up the mobility of non-teaching staff, which is particularly valuable in training the administrative support for internationalisation.
• To improve the support for incoming students in order to reach similar levels to that of outgoing students.
• To increase mobility of students of all cycles, teaching and non-teaching staff towards the more recent EU partners and countries newly eligible for Erasmus.
• To develop and use more effectively the tools for doctoral mobility.
• To develop more double and joint degree programmes with European and non-European partner.