The European Commission has announced the results of the 2024 Erasmus+ call for the European Universities Initiative, which offers support to alliances of higher education institutions. In this call, 14 new alliances of European Universities join the 50 previously selected alliances and will receive up to 14.4 million euros each for four years.

These 64 alliances encompass more than 560 higher education institutions in 35 countries, including all EU Member States, as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Turkey. The consortia also bring together almost 2200 associates ranging from non-governmental organizations to companies, cities, local and regional authorities.

The results mark an important turning point, achieving the goal of the European strategy for universities to have at least 60 alliances of European Universities with more than 500 universities involved by mid-2024.

At the national level, in this latest call, 5 public universities have joined different alliances: the University of la Coruña, the University of Malaga, the University of Huelva, the University of Girona and the University of the Balearic Islands, as well as the UOC and the UNED; and 3 private universities: the Abat Oliba CEU University,  the University of Francisco de Vitoria, and the European University of Valencia.

Spain already has 54 participating institutions and is the third country with the most institutions within this project.

It should be noted that almost all Catalan universities are already part of the European Universities Initiatives. In this call, it has been announced that the University of Girona will become part of the ACROSS alliance and the Open University of Catalonia will be part of the Open EU Alliance.

UPF has been part of the EUTOPIA Alliance  along with 10 other European universities since 2019. The project has already brought together a total of 298,303 students and 874 research groups in the last 5 years. In addition, UPF is also the coordinator of the Alliance's core project, EUTOPIA More.

In addition to boosting new European University alliances, the 2024 Erasmus+ call will also support the creation of Communities of Practice for European Universities. The aim is to create a collaborative and supportive environment where alliances can come together to share good practices and experiences within the community. This initiative will strengthen learning between alliances and promote the dissemination of reusable results and models within the higher education sector.