Are European University Alliances at a turning point?
In the wake of the European Commission selecting 20 European University Alliances to receive €145.6 million (US$163 million) of Erasmus+ funding, rectors, presidents and vice-chancellors from across the continent meeting in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, next week, will be looking at what extra values the European University Alliances can bring to European higher education cooperation and collaboration.
The funding is being given to ensure the momentum of the initiative is maintained until the next Multinational Financial Framework budget cycle begins in 2028, but the rectors will be looking at what added value they create for academic communities.
In an interview ahead of the 2026 Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum (MCU) conference, in collaboration with the Magna Charta Observatory (MCO), two of the leading figures from UNICA – the network of the universities from the capitals of Europe – spoke to University World News, about the session they are jointly moderating on one of the most ambitious policy developments within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
Beyond the short-term
Professors Luciano Saso and Romita Iucu aim to look beyond the haphazard short-term funding of the Alliances and how they are trying to overcome the challenges of developing cross-border joint academic programmes and removing some of the regulatory and practical barriers that still make genuine transnational cooperation difficult.
Instead, they want to focus on what is actually being built through the European University Alliances.
“We need to move beyond the architecture of the Alliances – who participates, how they are funded, how they are governed – and ask what kind of European university community we are creating through them,” said Iucu, who is president of the Board of Trustees at the University of Bucharest, Romania and secretary general of CIVIS (an alliance of research-intensive European universities).
Both Iucu and Saso believe the MCO brings a very important perspective in highlighting not only what Alliances can do for European universities but how they could help create a new future for European cooperation and prosperity.
“That’s why now is a good time to have this discussion in Vilnius,” added Saso, the secretary general of UNICA and a professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy and Medicine at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Turning point reached
“We have reached a turning point. In many ways the European Universities Initiative has been an experiment to see if universities from different countries could work together in much deeper and more integrated ways.
“Now, the Alliances are moving from individual projects towards longer-term institutional cooperation.
“They are becoming more ambitious, developing joint educational offers, new forms of mobility, research and innovation cooperation, and increasingly sophisticated, maybe sometimes too sophisticated, forms of governance.
“Once you move in that direction, the difficult questions start to appear. Who decides? How do you reconcile the autonomy of individual universities with collective decision-making? How do you protect academic freedom across different national systems? How do you create something genuinely European without everyone following one institutional model?”
Until now, values could remain largely declarative, but if the Alliances become a permanent feature of the European education landscape, values become operational, said the two moderators of the session at the Magna Charta conference, for which University World News is the media partner.
Shaping future HE
The MCO Secretary General David Lock told University World News that the panel session jointly moderated by Saso and Iucu will help position the European University Alliances, networks of universities, and the MCO “not as separate initiatives, but as complementary forces shaping the future of European higher education through shared academic values, institutional autonomy, international cooperation and societal responsibility.”
The focus of the debate at the Vilnius conference is welcomed by Olga Wessels, head of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU) and coordinator for FOREU4All, a community of practice bringing together all European Universities Alliances.
Wessels said it is important to see moves to bring universities closer together through the higher education alliances in the wider context of European integration and told University World News: “The European University Alliances clearly have support at the highest political level within the EU, with the European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen prioritising the initiative in her 2026 State of Union Letter of Intent (in September).”
European University Alliances 2.0
Wessels said the social and inclusion section of the State of the Union letter listed the European University Alliances 2.0 as a core priority for the next phase of building on current transnational campus networks to deepen institutional cooperation on joint degrees and research across member states and move the initiative forward.
Von Der Leyen’s letter of intent also ties higher education collaboration closer to the EU’s single market and economic competitiveness agenda by pooling cross-border university resources to help build a more unified and connected knowledge-based economy, capable of competing against global superpowers.
Wessels said: “The Alliances 2.0 announcement is a recognition of all the work done so far in bringing European universities closer together and is a good signal for the future of the initiative.”
She agreed with Saso and Iucu that with this level of support, it is the right time to discuss “going beyond the mechanics” and looking at what the Alliances can bring to the European project for greater cooperation between member states to make Europe stronger and more united Europe.
Respecting diversity and autonomy
In the Concept Note for the session on University Alliances, the conference organisers spell out some of the key objectives to move the discussion, including exploring how European University Alliances and networks of universities operationalise the principles of the MCU in their governance, education, research and societal engagement.
These include examining how Alliances contribute to strengthening the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) while respecting institutional diversity and autonomy and increasing the long-term sustainability and global attractiveness of European higher education.
Iucu told University World News that as the Alliances move from individual projects towards longer-term institutional cooperation and become more ambitious, developing joint educational offers, new forms of mobility, research and innovation cooperation, new and more challenging questions arise, such as how do you reconcile the autonomy of individual universities with collective decision-making?
“How do you protect academic freedom across different national systems? How do you create something genuinely European without following one institutional model on everyone?
Right time to talk about values
“That is why we think this is the right time to talk about values,” said Iucu.
“We see this conference as an opportunity to ask a very timely question: are European Alliances going to become part of the future architecture of European higher education, and, if yes, what principles should guide that architecture?
“That’s a particularly important question to ask now, before the new structures become fully established.”
There is also a key need to try to influence the next EU Framework Programme, which will prioritise funding for the seven years starting in 2028, with pressure building to increase funding for Erasmus+ in the next decade from a coalition of 88 EU-level organisations.
Iucu said: “The next European funding framework will be extremely important. It will help determine whether Alliances remain dependent on a succession of projects or whether they can become a stable and sustainable part of European higher education.”
However, Iucu warned against the European Commission being too prescriptive in trying to design the Alliances.
He told University World News: “There’s an interesting paradox here. While we are creating deeper European cooperation, we are saying that institutional autonomy matters.
“If we believe in autonomy, we have to give Alliances enough room to develop in different ways, which is the big success at the community level with this project.”
Moving beyond project orientation
Iucu and Saso want three things from European policymakers.
First, sustainable conditions for Alliances to develop beyond short-term project cycles, and move forward from a project-orientated structure, to a more organised processual way to cooperate at the highest international and global level.
Second, removal of some of the regulatory and practical barriers that still make genuine transnational cooperation difficult.
And third, they want the University Alliances to be given enough trust and flexibility to experiment, to validate, and to create new alternatives to traditional models of thinking and shaping future European higher education.
While the EU should set an ambitious direction, guiding and supporting the steps required for the journey, organisations like the MCU and MCO can ensure that academic values remain key to the future development of the University Alliances, said Saso and Iucu.
Laboratories for values-based innovation
Saso described the Alliances as “laboratories for values-based innovation” and said they can become “a kind of stress test for academic values”.
He gave the example of institutional autonomy.
“We all agree that universities should be autonomous, but what happens when several autonomous universities start making decisions together? Where does the autonomy of the individual institution end, and where does the responsibility of the Alliance begin?
“Or take academic freedom; it is one thing to protect it within one university and one national legal system, and it becomes much more complicated when teaching and research increasingly cross institutional and national borders.
“These are not theoretical questions; Alliances will have to deal with them. That is why we talk about a laboratory.”
The conference in Vilnius is being hosted by Mykolas Romeris University from 14 to 16 October 2026, with this year’s theme being ‘Beyond Resilience: Universities as active value-driven agents in a changing world’.
The session on ‘Beyond cooperation: European networks and University Alliances and the future of academic values. How European University Alliances can reinforce the Magna Charta values?’ takes place at 16.30 EEST on Thursday 15 October.
Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com