Zaharieva holds out against EU funding for universities alliances from research programme budgets

Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European Commissioner for Start-ups, Research and Innovation, has stated that European universities alliances should not be funded from the EU's budget for research programmes.

Responding to requests from France for funding for alliances, Zaharieva said: "Under Horizon Europe, we don't fund institutions. We fund research and I believe that we should continue that way."

At a meeting of EU ministers for research in Brussels on 09/12/2025, France's deputy permanent representative to the EU, Cyril Piquemal, presented the results of an impact assessment that his government had carried out on the value of universities alliances. He said that they were a "catalyst for cultural change" in universities and that the assessment showed the "transformative effects" they could have.

Zaharieva said in response that alliances were "crucial in driving innovation" and stressed the importance, in the next research framework programme, of strengthening the link between higher-education institutes and their ecosystems.

The Commissioner added that universities that were part of…