The EMERGE European University Alliance joins fellow European University Alliances in expressing concern regarding the Draft Report of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) on the establishment of the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF).
The EMERGE Governing Board, representing all nine-member universities, has endorsed the position put forward by EUTOPIA and other higher education stakeholders. We call on ITRE Members of the European Parliament to retain Recital 21 and preserve Article 30 of the ECF Regulation, provisions that establish the legal basis for supporting skills development, public-private partnerships with universities, and the activities of European University Alliances.
European University Alliances are not peripheral actors in this debate. Through sustained cooperation in education, research, mobility, and regional engagement, they contribute directly to the skills, innovation capacity, and territorial cohesion Europe seeks to strengthen. Weakening the legal foundations supporting higher education within the European Competitiveness Fund would risk undermining the progress achieved through the European Universities Initiative and limit universities’ capacity to contribute to Europe’s long term economic and social development.
For an alliance like EMERGE, rooted in the geographic, economic and social margins of Europe, this has a particular urgency. Our nine universities serve communities where the connection between education, innovation and economic opportunity is fragile. These are precisely the regions where ECF investment could have the greatest impact, and where cutting the legal link between that investment and higher education would be felt most sharply.
Without a clear reference to higher education in the ECF Regulation, funding for skills development, scholarships in strategic fields, and Alliance activities cannot be securely deployed. With Erasmus+ facing significant budgetary pressure in the next Multiannual Financial Framework, the ECF is a genuine opportunity to open new funding pathways for European universities, not close them.
We urge the European Parliament to act in keeping with Europe’s stated ambition: a competitive, resilient and cohesive Union in which every region, including its margins, has the capacity to contribute.