European Universities: nine French institutions implied in new projects

In the wake of the “speech of La Sorbonne for a sovereign, united and democratic Europe” given by president Macron in 2017, the creation of European Universities launched as early as 2018 led to new alliance between European higher education institutions. These European universities, financed by the European Union and supported as part of the France 2030 plan, aim at offering new opportunities in relation with training, research and innovation to all the university community.

A new objective for 2025

“These results confirm once again the commitment of French institutions for the initiative of European institutions, and more broadly for the development of European cooperation between universities, to the benefit of students, scientific excellence and innovation”, said Sylvie Retailleau, French Minister for Higher Education and Research after the announcement of the European Commission. The minister is indeed glad that “this collective success of French institutions” is the illustration of new actions to “test various solutions to develop cooperation between universities in Europe”. According to the minister, the announcement follows work started one year ago under the French presidency of the European Union.

After the success of European Universities initiatives committing in France, before the announcement, 32 institutions in 28 alliances, a new step opened in 2022 with the extension of existing alliances and a new objective to reach 60 European universities before 2025.

Lessons to be learnt

As the European Commission underlines, in the wake of the call for proposals 2022, a total of 44 European universities including today 340 higher education institutions located in capitals and regions of 31 countries, including all EU Member States and Iceland, Norway, Serbia and Turkey. The initiative of European universities is now fully integrated in the Erasmus+ programme 2021-2027.

The French ministry of higher education speaks of a momentum that, three years after the start of the initiative, will continue in the form of important steps: the renewal and creation of alliances next summer, and an overall assessment in 2024 including “the lessons to learn from experimentation to deploy and deepen even further cooperation between university institutions in Europe”.

A new call for projects with a record budget

The European Commission stresses that the Erasmus+ call for projects 2023 in relation with European Universities is now open with a record budget of 387.2 million euros.

The new call is accessible to all higher education institutions in European countries and is structured around two themes:

• the intensification of institutional transnational cooperation agreements: the objective is here to “rely on institutional cooperation currently in force and deepen, intensify and extend the efficiency of this existing cooperation to make progress towards the vision at long term of European Universities”.
• the development of new institutional transnational cooperation agreements: this subject should provide “support to applicants who want to establish a new developed institutional transnational cooperation agreement” in a new alliance of European universities.