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The European Universities Initiative aims to strengthen strategic and in-depth transnational collaboration through the development of alliances involving universities from several European countries.
The European University Association has actively engaged with the European Universities Initiative and the development of the alliances since 2017, when they were first proposed in a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron at Sorbonne University.
As of end 2024, 375 of EUA’s more than 900 members are part of the currently 64 alliances (involving more than 560 higher education institutions) supported by the EU’s Erasmus+ and the Horizon Europe programmes.
Through its policy and advocacy work, EUA contributes to shaping the framework conditions for universities across Europe to facilitate deep transnational cooperation in alliances and beyond.
Working hand in hand with its members, EUA supports them in developing strategic approaches to transnational cooperation and alliance-building. This encompasses all university missions of learning, teaching, research and innovation, as well as several strands of the Association’s work, from institutional development and quality assurance, to funding, governance and leadership development.
EUA supports the European Universities Initiative and advocates for measures to ensure the sustainability and impact of transnational cooperation within and beyond alliances. Since 2018, the Association is part of the European Commission’s stakeholder consultation group that accompanies the development of the initiative and closely engages in related policy discussions.
Similarly, EUA contributes to exchanges on university cooperation and alliances in the context of the European Education Area Strategic Working Group on Higher Education as well as in relevant working groups of the European Research Area. As part of this, EUA provides input to the policy discussions on related topics such as the ‘European Degree’, a legal statute for alliances, the monitoring system for the impact of the European Universities Initiative and a future investment pathway for alliances, as well as a European quality assurance and recognition system and a framework for sustainable higher education careers.
Moreover, EUA has called on European and national policy makers to make a substantial leap forward in supporting transnational university cooperation including the alliances under the European Universities Initiative, through policy reform and funding based on a long-term vision.
At European level, the goal must be to create a strategic, transparent and smooth system of transnational university cooperation that benefits the entire university sector and builds on best practices from within and beyond alliances under the European Universities Initiative.
Read our position paper
EUA’s work on the alliances and deep transnational cooperation also feeds into the advocacy on the next generation of EU funding programmes, such as Erasmus+ and the tenth Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP10). Specifically in the context of the EU research and innovation funding, EUA calls for dedicated support for universities and alliances that wish to further develop transnational cooperation in these areas. Such support, based on open competition, should allow for the establishment of joint structures to enhance R&I capacity and advance joint R&I initiatives.
EUA supports its members in engaging in alliances and transnational cooperation more broadly. It does so by leveraging the Association’s expertise in areas such as learning and teaching, quality assurance and institutional development, research and innovation and governance, funding and leadership development, as well as foresight and futures thinking.
Developing and delivering joint education provision such as joint programmes, joint micro-credentials or other formats, is among the main aims of European Universities alliances. EUA has explored the challenges and enablers in designing transnational joint education provision in a Thematic Peer Group in 2023 as well as the 2024 EUA Trends survey.
As quality assurance often poses practical challenges in the development of joint education, specifically for joint programmes, EUA contributed to the EUniQ project (2019-2022) that looked at the feasibility of alliance level quality assurance processes. Also, EUA’s Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) is open for requests for evaluations of alliances to support their strategic long-term sustainability.
Learn about EUA-IEP
Funding for transnational cooperation and alliances is a particular challenge for universities given the differences in national funding frameworks, levels of funding and financial autonomy of institutions. EUA’s work to support universities’ financial sustainability covers these new challenges, by carrying out Europe-wide data collection and providing expertise on the matter. The Association also offers opportunities to its members, such as our Funding Forum events, to explore financial best practice among alliances.
EUA’s analysis underlines the need to develop sustainable governance processes for alliances, connect to core decision-making processes within universities and support their long-term vision.
Leading and managing large-scale transnational cooperation is a complex endeavour. Therefore, it is also a notable challenge for university leadership. How to take a more strategic leadership approach will be an important focus of EUA’s new Leadership Development Programme.
EUA’s Leadership Development Programme
The European Universities alliances started with the development of the education dimension, but in the meantime, many universities in alliances are also looking to strengthen collaboration in research and innovation. EUA has highlighted this emerging area of collaboration in its vision for FP10 and explored it further through a dedicated workshop on this topic with members in alliances in spring 2024. The outcomes also fed into the development of EUA’s policy position on the future of transnational cooperation.
As transnational cooperation and alliance-building is an important topic also for the future of Europe and its universities, EUA has dedicated parts of its foresight and futures thinking work with members to this topic. As part of the ‘Universities and the future of Europe’ project in 2023/2024, the Association explored possible futures of transnational cooperation for Europe’s universities to inspire university strategy development.
Explore UniFE’s forecasts and scenarios
One of the key challenges for deepening transnational cooperation in the digital era is interoperability of university IT systems e.g. for the creation of common course catalogues, joint provision and student data management. EUA’s briefing on ‘Developing common learning opportunities through interoperability’ explores the challenges based on evidence from interviews with alliance partners and provides useful insights for institutions that wish to increase interoperability.
EUA’s interoperability briefing
Beyond this, EUA is associated partner of the Community of Practice of European Universities alliances (FOREU4ALL) which is being established in the framework of an Erasmus+ project. As part of the external advisory board, EUA ensures the link with the wider sector and brings in its expertise as well as the institutional perspective.
