INGENIUM joins the call from the European university sector for the European Parliament to keep higher education funding within the European Competitiveness Fund

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.