URL, new official member of the European University Alliance ENGAGE.EU

Joint quest for sustainable solutions

ENGAGE.EU, which started in 2020 as “European University”, aims to bring together the students, scholars, and support staff of nine prominent European universities: University of Mannheim (Mannheim, Germany), Hanken School of Economics (Finland), Luiss Univeristy (Rome, Italy), NHH Norwegian School of Economics (Bergen, Norway), Tilburg University (Tilburg, Netherlands), University of National and World Economy (Sofia, Bulgary), Université Toulouse Capitole (Toulouse, France) and WU Vienna University of Economics and Business (Vienna, Austry).

The objective is to develop new models to stimulate student and staff mobility that contribute to the quality, inclusiveness, and competitiveness of European higher education. Within the alliance, we work at an interdisciplinary level on sustainable solutions for social issues by offering a programme focusing on education, innovation, and research. As part of this programme, students, scholars, and staff can make both online and off-line use of the programmes and courses offered at the affiliated European universities.

Besides building the ENGAGE.EU organisation, making agreements, and streamlining working processes, many projects have been realised in the past three years in which students and scholars were able to experience the benefits of ENGAGE.EU. Some examples include offering more than 500 courses for ENGAGE.EU students in a joint course catalogue, the more than 50 students who are participating in the Master’s-level honours program of Digital Transformation, and the seven expedition weeks in which almost 200 students have worked on social challenges together with external stakeholders. In addition, a research community platform has been developed and launched in which approximately 250 scholars have found each other as sources of inspiration and collaboration.

Collaborations without borders

ENGAGE.EU facilitates systematic European collaboration among the affiliated universities. Therefore, the European Commission is fully committed to the further implementation of the European Universities initiative. By mid-2024, more than 500 higher education institutions in Europe will form part of such an alliance. This constitutes approximately 10 percent of the total number of institutions. 

The European University Initiative

European Universities is an initiative within the Erasmus + programme of the European Union aimed to establish new standards of collaboration among higher education institutions. The European Universities initiative is intended to function as a model of good practice to further increase the quality, international competitiveness, and attractiveness of European higher education.