On November 10, the European Executive Agency for Culture and Education (EACEA) together with the European Commission organized an informative webinar on the new call for alliances of European universities. You can submit your application until February 6 at 5:00 p.m. The Commission will publish the results in the summer. This is the last call for new alliances , no call will be published in 2025 and 2026, and for 2027 and 2028 the Commission is preparing calls for two-year funding for existing alliances.
During the webinar, the representatives of the Commission and the EACEA agency focused mainly on the strategic goals of the European Universities, the conditions of the call and tips on how to write a quality project application. You can watch the recording of the webinar on the EACEA website , where you can also find the presentation .
In the first part of the webinar, EACEA representatives reminded that there are two topics in this year’s call: Topic 1 – Development of close international cooperation between institutions , intended to support the creation of new European Universities, and Topic 2 – Community of practice for alliances of European universities , aimed at the creation of a community, which will connect current alliances with each other and at the same time with the entire European higher education environment and enable them to exchange experiences. The goal of the 2024 challenge is to support at least 10 new alliances to reach at least 60 alliances by mid-2024.
In the introduction, Vanessa Debiais-Sainton presented the policy goals of the initiative, which is a key part of the European Strategy for Universities and the European Education Area and is intended to develop both excellence and inclusion in European higher education and to promote the European way of life and European values. She stated that the Commission, in cooperation with the Member States, is working on a sustainable financing model after 2027 within the framework of the new program period, the so-called Investment Pathway, which is supposed to support the Member States through national funding sources. Debiais-Sainton also mentioned the EU Council Conclusions on the European Universities initiative from 2021 and stated that more than 430 universities are currently involved in alliances.
Subsequently, the representatives of DG EAC said that in the 2024 call, the seal of “Seal of Excellence” will again be awarded to high-quality projects (over 80 points), which will not be supported due to a limited budget. As in last year’s call, higher education institutions from Western Balkan countries not associated with the Erasmus+ program (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo) can be involved in the alliances . The change compared to last year’s call is the increase of the total minimum number of points in the evaluation criteria from 70 to 80 points (and 17 points out of 25 for the relevance and impact criteria). The novelty of this year’s challenge is the already mentioned support for the creation of a community of practice, which is to be created by one project (one consortium).
At the end of the webinar, the representatives of the Commission stated that the legal status of the alliances is not a condition for project approval , but is welcome. They also emphasized that one university institution can be involved as a full partner in only one alliance, but as an associate partner can be involved in several. However, care must be taken to ensure that the university lives up to all its obligations and is realistic in this regard. They also pointed out that it is possible to add partners to the alliance later, but without an additional budget increase.