The results of the 2023 European Universities call for proposals show a big expansion of the initiative, including several Swiss universities.
The European Universities Initiative (EUI) is continuously growing in importance and in numbers. On 3 July 2023, the European Commission (EC) published the much anticipated results of the 2023 call for proposals. This call included the continuation and expansion of the existing alliances from 2020 as well as the creation of new alliances. These results conclude the continued funding of all the existing alliances from the 2019 and 2020 pilot calls.
This year, the EC decided to fund 30 alliances: 23 existing alliances from 2020 and 7 new alliances. Together with the 20 alliances that were funded last year, this brings the total of existing alliances to 50, involving over 430 higher education institutions (HEI) from Erasmus+ and Western Balkan countries, and additional associated HEI partners from Bologna Process countries such as Switzerland. The average size of all 50 alliances is now at 9 members per alliance.
From the 24 alliances from 2020, 23 were retained and will receive continued funding from Erasmus+. The Athena alliance was not selected for further funding. The 23 existing alliances added on average three new full members to their consortia. Some alliances made more significant changes to their composition: FilmEU and ERUA both added more new members than they retained existing ones. And the UNITA alliance doubled in size compared to 2020. Another special feature is that four alliances in this call created legal entities and list them as members. This is the case for Circle U, EUNICE, FilmEU and UNITA. Next to the many HEIs that joined the alliances, there were also around 10 HEI leaving alliances, 3 of them are from Hungary. This could be due to the current suspension of a number of Hungarian public trust universities from the Erasmus+ programme due to the political tensions overrule of law issues. The seven new alliances are namely COLOURS combining strongly regionally-rooted universities, EULiST focusing on technology and engineering, EUPeace working on peace and justice, IN.TUNE bringing together music and arts schools, NEOLAiA working on digital transition and inclusion, as well as START-EU and UREKA SHIFT consisting primarily of universities of applied sciences (UAS). With the latest additions, there are now around 40 universities of applied sciences among the 430 HEIs in the alliances.
The EU target stated in the Commission’s 2022 European Strategy for Universities is to have 60 alliances comprising 500 HEI by mid-2024. The EC is well on track to achieve this goal, with a final call for proposals in this programme generation expected to be opened in autumn 2023. This call will only target new alliances and is expected to fund up to 10-15 new consortia.
In the meantime, the EC is moving forward with consultations on the creation of an investment pathway for European Universities post-2027. The future funding of European University alliances should become simpler and more sustainable. Therefore, a dedicated long-term funding mechanism in the next Erasmus+ programme is discussed, as well as synergistic funding models with Horizon Europe and other programmes. Furthermore, the Commission is looking for a more coherent approach for national co-funding schemes for European Universities and sees them as important building blocks for the sustainability of the alliances. In the nearer future, the EC is also moving forward with the creation of a monitoring framework for the EUI to assess the transformational potential of the initiative. For this framework the alliances will have to provide data on a number of dimensions that could include impact, governance, joint learning offers, or engagement with society.
Five Swiss HEIs are formally joining existing alliances with these 2023 results: EPFL is joining EuroTeQ, ETHZ is joining ENHANCE+, HES-SO is joining UNITA, the University of Bern is joining ENLIGHT, and ZHAW is joining EELISA. This brings the total number of Swiss HEIs in European University alliances to 9, which involves now most of the comprehensive Swiss universities and represents about 40% of all universities and universities of applied sciences in Switzerland. Additionally, the University of St. Gallen is participating in the ENGAGE.EU alliance with guest status.