24 Sep 2025
The Guild's position paper on Erasmus+ calls for greater flexibility of rules for activities bridging education and research
On 24 September 2025, The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities published a position paper 'Investing in Europe's next generation: The Guild's reaction to the Commission's Erasmus+ proposal'. In this position, The Guild welcomes the European Commission’s proposal for the Erasmus+ programme (2028–34), but also urges the Commission to address several critical issues to ensure the programme’s success.
The association welcomes the proposed budget of €40.8 billion for Erasmus+, but underlines that this is "the bare minimum", as Europe will need a young generation of skilled, competent graduates to ensure it can meet its strategic needs for the future. The Guild also calls for transparency and clarity about the main funding features, the scope of new initiatives and the governance of the programme, and emphasises the bottom-up as well as the global nature of the programme.
With regard to activities bridging education and research, The Guild is "pleased to see the integration of European Universities alliances in Erasmus+ for their core educational mission" and sees "additional windows for funding [...] proposed within the ECF “to improve their delivery on innovation and the development of skills and talent” and through Horizon Europe to develop “capacity to compete with global counterparts through collaboration, nurturing and attracting talent and leveraging more private investments”. According to the position paper, if this additional funding provides seed-funding for research teams to develop collaboration that fosters research excellence (as defined by researchers) and build capacities, this !might be a welcome way to connect emerging research consortia to educational priorities". However, this would require greater flexibility of Erasmus+ rules for activities which bridge education and research, and for global cooperation, especially in support for PhD students.
The Guild furthermore states that "any alignment with the ECF should not compromise the bottom-up nature of the alliances but foster their creativity in proposing their own ways on how to best respond to the ECF’s aspirations for skills and talent development". It calls for a "more balanced approach towards the European Universities initiative [...]. instead of running on high expectations, saying that the success of the alliances ultimately depends on the ability to align with, and challenge, national regulatory systems and institutional practices in meaningful ways.
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