European Solidarity Corps
voluntary service financed by the EU Commission
The European Solidarity Corps, known until 2016 as European Voluntary Service (EVS), is an international volunteering program by the European Commission for young people to go individually or in teams to another country, usually from one European country to another, to work for a non-profit cause. Since 2017, the program has also offered opportunities for European youth to get engaged as volunteers in their own communities.
History
Since the early 1990s, the European Commission was engaged in financing international voluntary service projects for young people as part of the program Youth for Europe. The Association of Voluntary Service Organisations, then known as Steering Group of Voluntary Organisations (CC-EYE), was active in lobbying for the rights of volunteers during this period. In 1996, the European Voluntary Service was established, when 200 volunteers were sent abroad for six to twelve months in a pilot project.
The European Voluntary Service was the second of the five "actions" of the European Union's programme Youth in Action. Until 2016, more than 100,000 volunteers had participated in the European Voluntary Service program. In 2017 and 2018, the European Voluntary Service was replaced by the European Solidarity Corps, which is an expanded version of the European Voluntary Service.
The program is being administered by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission.
Conditions
The European Solidarity Corps is open for young people between 18 and 30 years old from Europe and "partner countries" of the European Union.
The public source identifies “European Solidarity Corps” as voluntary service financed by the EU Commission. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around European, Solidarity and Corps.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1377838. VIAF identifies the subject as 136295604. The Library of Congress control number is nb2006009367. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2017, 1996 and 2018.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “European Solidarity Corps” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.