Academic mobility has become an increasing issue at the European level during the last decades. What might be less known is that long-term academic mobility is a fact since many years but still goes unregulated since most European programmes and regulations only cover short-term exchanges of students who go abroad less than twelve months.

The research offers to the reader:

►   a profound understanding of obstacles to academic mobility in the European Union

►   both a theoretical approach to explain the unusual harmonization efforts and excursion into game theory to determine the behaviour of Ministries of Education

►   the legal development of students’ rights to mobility with a particular focus on the special role of the European Court of Justice

►   proposals to improve academic mobility