The INGENIUM Alliance held a meeting of its Alliance Council at the University of Rouen-Normandy on 16 June 2026, in a session that worked both as a review of the alliance’s first funding phase and as a planning exercise for what follows. The meeting took place during the French university’s 60th anniversary and was chaired by Prof Ignacio Villaverde, President of the INGENIUM Alliance Council and Rector of the University of Oviedo.

INGENIUM has just completed its first external assessment, carried out under the Institutional Evaluation Programme of the European University Association, and the alliance was the first of its kind to take part in that programme. It is now awaiting the outcome of ‘Next INGENIUM’, its application for the 2027-2028 period. The Council used that intersection to prepare the transition between phases and to define how the alliance would protect its main lines of cooperation under any funding result.

The Director of the Alliance, Juan Rayón, set out the shift the alliance is working through, from a logic of funded projects towards a more permanent structure of collaboration between universities. Prof Villaverde put the same idea to the Council in plainer terms: “the momentum we have created must continue regardless of the outcome of any individual funding call.”

A year of joint education

Much of the morning was given over to what INGENIUM has built across the academic year, with the joint education offer as the clearest evidence. The alliance delivered its first accreditation under the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes, awarded by the Romanian agency ARACIS to the joint Master’s in Chemical and Biochemical Process Technologies run by Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, University Rouen Normandy, and University of Oviedo. It is the first accreditation of its kind in Romania and the starting point for teaching in the coming academic year.

A second joint Master’s, in sustainable maritime management and coastal conservation, is close behind in the accreditation process, alongside further programmes at Bachelor and doctoral level.

The offer extends well beyond degree programmes. Up to fourteen micro-credentials are in accreditation and expected to begin before December, with the first courses already running across several partners. The alliance’s Pathway Programmes, which combine partner courses, blended intensive programmes and a guaranteed long-term mobility within a single itinerary, now number thirteen, twelve of them opening to students in 2026/2027, against an original target of ten. The Council also reviewed the Blended Intensive Programmes planned for next year, the joint doctoral programmes under way, and the Education Labs and research groups that connect teaching and research across the partnership.

Ready for any scenario

The central decision of the Council concerned the activities INGENIUM commits to sustain whether or not its main grant is renewed. Partners agreed that joint and collaborative education, together with their progression towards the European Degree, forms the shared core of the alliance, supported by student and staff mobility through Erasmus+ KA131, by blended intensive programmes and by a growing offer of micro-credentials, all organised within a single annual cycle designed to keep coordination lean.

Around that core, the Council confirmed a common floor of institutional commitments, so that the responsibility for sustaining the alliance is shared across the partnership and planned in advance instead of falling on a handful of universities.

Prof Villaverde tied the point to the alliance’s own resources. “There is so much potential in our collaboration that we cannot depend solely on external European Union funding,” he told the Council. “We must also sustain it with our own resources to make the most of its reach.”

A legal entity to give the alliance continuity

INGENIUM is in the process of establishing a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation as its future legal entity, with its headquarters at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk). The application is before the Finnish authorities and registration is expected around the turn of the year.

Partners agreed the first-year priorities for the entity and a funding approach that keeps it lean from the outset, concentrating its early work on three functions: securing external funding for the alliance’s priorities, representing INGENIUM before European institutions and the wider community of alliances, and coordinating the annual education cycle.

On resources, the Council favoured an approach that lets the entity begin without significant additional outlay in its first phase, drawing on member contributions and on the funding it generates as it builds a track record.

INGENIUM expects the results of the ‘Next INGENIUM’ application in the second half of July and will convene a meeting after the summer to analyse them and prepare the transition in either case. The alliance will close its first phase at a Final Conference in late November 2026, with the University of Oviedo as host.

As Prof Villaverde reminded the Council in Rouen, the alliance now lets very different institutions “work together, learn from one another’s experience and build shared answers to challenges that no single university can tackle alone.”

The paper, titled Unlocking Erasmus+ KA131 for Joint Programmes: The Case for Removing the 12-Month Mobility Limit, sets out a practical adaptation to the Erasmus+ Programme Guide that would allow KA131 funding to cover the full duration of a Joint Programme.

The proposal responds to a structural difficulty in the way Joint Programmes are currently funded. Under the present Programme Guide, KA131 long-term mobility is capped at twelve months per study cycle, a limit designed for the classic exchange model in which a student spends part of a degree abroad before returning home.

Joint Programmes work differently: mobility forms part of the curriculum itself, with students typically studying at two or more partner institutions across the full twenty-four months of a joint Master’s, or thirty-six months of a joint Bachelor’s. The twelve-month cap therefore covers, at best, half of a student’s mobility needs at Master’s level and only a third at Bachelor’s level.

The eight Alliances argue that closing this gap requires neither new legislation nor additional budget. Article 5 of the Erasmus+ Regulation (EU) 2021/817 sets no maximum duration for mobility activities, so the twelve-month cap is a provision of the Programme Guide rather than a legal requirement.

Because the Commission revises the Programme Guide annually in consultation with the Erasmus+ Programme Committee, the change can be introduced for the 2027 Work Programme without amending the Regulation, building on earlier adaptations such as the recent revision of the rules governing Blended Intensive Programmes.

The paper puts forward three targeted amendments to the Programme Guide. The first establishes an exception to the twelve-month limit for students in Joint Programmes accredited under the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes, subject to a clause preventing double funding.

The second introduces flexibility in defining the sending institution, so that any partner in a consortium can take on that role and the funding burden is shared more equitably across the partnership. The third offers an optional budget ceiling that protects the general mobility pool, giving National Agencies control over how much KA131 funding is directed towards Joint Programme mobility.

Alongside these immediate measures, the paper sets out two complementary proposals for the sustainable funding of Joint Programmes as the European Degree agenda scales over the coming years, namely the recognition of Joint Programme delivery in KA131 funding allocation and the introduction of organisational support grants comparable to those already available for Blended Intensive Programmes.

The timing of the proposal is closely tied to the European Degree agenda. The Council Resolution of 12 May 2025 on a European Degree label, together with the European Degree Exploratory Actions backed by a €14 million call for proposals, has placed Joint Programmes at the centre of European higher education policy. Yet accredited Joint Programmes remain few: fewer than one hundred have been evaluated under the European Approach, most at Master’s level and many linked to Erasmus Mundus, while a survey by the FOREU4ALL topical group identified 86 joint degrees currently operational or in accreditation and a further 125 under development across the Alliances alone.

Because most cohorts range between twenty and forty students, the budgetary effect of extending KA131 mobility would be modest, while the effect on the viability of these programmes could be considerable.

The Alliances frame the proposal as a question of inclusivity. Erasmus Mundus funding has historically concentrated among research-intensive universities, leaving universities of applied sciences and other institution types with limited access. KA131, by contrast, is available to every accredited higher education institution in Europe through its National Agency, which makes it the most widely accessible instrument for supporting Joint Programme mobility across institutional profiles and across regions, including those facing depopulation, where programmes with an embedded European dimension can help retain talent.

INGENIUM and the other seven signatory Alliances invite European University Alliances, Joint Programme consortia, stakeholders and policy-makers to endorse the position and to support the inclusion of these adaptations in the 2027 Erasmus+ Work Programme and Programme Guide. The full paper is available below.

INGENIUM has issued a Statement of Support addressed to Members of the European Parliament, the Council, the Commission and the Member States, asking that the higher education sector and the European University Alliances retain a clear legal basis within the future European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), one of the central financial instruments of the European Union’s next budgetary framework for the 2028–2034 period.

The INGENIUM text forms part of a coordinated action by the European university sector. The Alliance endorses the joint statement signed on 7 April by the German Rectors’ Conference, France Universités, the Universities of the Netherlands, the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland, the Flemish Interuniversity Council, the Rectors’ Council of the French-speaking universities of Belgium and the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities, together with the demands put forward by the FOREU4ALL coalition, which brings together the European University Alliances.

The specific trigger for the INGENIUM statement is the proposal by the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) to shorten Recital 21 and delete Article 30 of the Regulation establishing the future European Competitiveness Fund, which are precisely the provisions that recognise the role of university alliances within the Union’s competitiveness policy. Since European financial law requires expenditure to be expressly authorised, the removal of these references would leave funding for the activities of European University Alliances through the ECF without a legal basis.

In its statement, INGENIUM recalls that its ten universities are firmly rooted in their territories, and that regional universities such as those that make up the alliance are where investments in strategic sectors translate into new capabilities and into cooperation with companies, public administrations and social partners across the territory. Without a clear reference to higher education and to the alliances within the future European Competitiveness Fund, the signatories of the 7 April statement fear that the territorial cohesion of European competitiveness policy will be undermined.

The legislative process will run over the coming months, with the vote on the report in the ITRE Committee, the debate in the European Parliament’s plenary and the subsequent negotiations between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission.

The 7 April statement, which INGENIUM has joined, goes beyond the European Competitiveness Fund file and asks the Parliament, the Council and the Member States to commit to a budget commensurate with the wider set of challenges open in the next financial framework: a budget of €220 billion for the successor to Horizon Europe (FP10) and of €60 billion for Erasmus+, together with, as an absolute minimum, an Erasmus+ envelope of €47 billion with fixed sectoral allocations guaranteeing at least 33% for higher education. It also asks the future European Research Area Act to strengthen academic freedom, the mobility of researchers and international cooperation without adding administrative complexity.

The ten universities of INGENIUM call on the European institutions and the Member States to use the legislative calendar of the coming months to place the university sector at the centre of Europe’s response to the great challenges facing the Union in such turbulent times.