Brussels (Brussels Morning) – The EU Commission announced the 2024 Erasmus+ call results, supporting 14 new European Universities alliances with up to €14.4 million each, expanding the initiative to 64 alliances involving over 560 institutions across Europe.
The EU Commission informed the results of the 2024 Erasmus+ call for the European Universities initiative, which delivers support to alliances of higher education institutions. As a result, 14 new European Universities alliances are entering the 50 previously selected alliances and will accept up to €14.4 million each over four years.
How many higher education institutions are in the alliances?
These 64 European Universities alliances contain more than 560 higher education institutions of all kinds, across all regions of Europe. The results mark a critical milestone, reaching the European strategy for universities’ goal to have at least 60 European Universities alliances with more than 500 universities implicated by mid-2024.
What goals does the European Universities initiative aim to achieve?
The European university alliances convey together a new generation of Europeans and permit them to study and perform in different European countries, in various languages, and across sectors and academic disciplines. Students can receive a high-level degree by combining investigations in several European countries, donating to the international attractiveness and competitiveness of Europe’s higher education. These partnerships also bring innovation to Europe’s regions by permitting students to work together with academics, researchers, businesses, cities, authorities, and civil society organisations.
Which countries are included in the 64 alliances?
The 64 alliances traverse 35 countries, including all EU Member States, as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Montenegro, the Republic of North-Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, and Türkiye. They are solidly docked in communities and innovation networks, getting together almost 2200 associated members ranging from non-governmental organisations to businesses, cities, local and regional authorities, and higher education organisations from the Bologna Process countries. For instance, almost 40 higher education institutions from Ukraine are associated with members.
What role does the Community of Practice play?
The 2024 Erasmus+ call for submissions also sustains the set-up of a Community of Practice for European Universities, supporting peer learning between the alliances and promoting the dissemination of reusable results and standards within the wider higher education sector. The 14 new alliances of EU Universities and the Community of Practice for European Universities will begin their activities in the autumn of this year.
The EU Commission will continue backing the European Universities alliances and any other kind of partnership between higher education institutions to provide joint degree programmes more easily, as also summarised in the blueprint for a European degree presented in March 2024.
The European Universities initiative sustains transnational alliances of, on average, nine higher education institutions that can contain different types of establishments, such as extensive and research universities, universities of applied sciences, universities of technology, schools of arts and higher vocational teaching and training institutions. These higher education institutions design a long-term structural, sustainable, and systemic collaboration on education, in synergy with research and creation, across borders, and donate to solving societal challenges. They deliver curricula jointly delivered across inter-university campuses, on which students, staff, and students from all parts of Europe can enjoy seamless mobility.
