Alliances and UK universities prepare for Erasmus+ association to open new opportunities as full members

Already important partnerships with UK universities

The University College London and the University of Exeter joined EUGLOH as they already had ties with several members. "It was quite natural to start working with them through the alliance. We are strongly aligned in terms of profile and thematic orientation, and we share a mutual interest in deeper strategic cooperation," Helmeid said.

"For Circle U., King’s is an essential partner because of the quality of its research and teaching, its reputation, international focus, the quality of its academic and scientific community, and so on. It’s truly essential for us to have a partner of this calibre with whom we share strong values," Guillaume said.

"It will be a radical change to be able to count on King’s and for King’s to be able to participate with European funding," he added.

Impact of Brexit on alliance members

When Circle U. was founded in 2020, King's obtained EU funding like all other members. But when the alliance obtained its second funding phase in 2023, the UK institution was officially demoted to an associated member and lost EU funding.

"But King's has been a member of our legal entity from the very beginning. So, by statute, no matter what happens, even when losing European funding, it remains a full member of the alliance. So King’s has always been part of our board and our general assembly, and therefore makes decisions alongside the other eight members on an equal footing," Guillaume explained.

"When King’s lost its European funding due to Brexit, it radically changed their ability to contribute to the alliance, even though there is a very strong strategic commitment to remain involved and contribute in the same way to the various activities and initiatives we had. But without funding, it was complicated for the mobility of their faculty and students, and for the staff hired at King’s to work on Circle U.," Guillaume said.

The institution adopted a "cherry-picking" strategy, becoming very selective about which activities of the alliance it would participate in with its own funds, "even though there is a very strong strategic commitment to maintaining a presence and contributing in the same way", Guillaume assured.

UK universities relying on own funds or legal entity's external funding

Helmeid said that the current collaboration with the UK partners was "relatively light and supported through their own institutional funding, which is challenging given the financial pressures many UK universities currently face".

"There haven’t really been dedicated resources available to support deeper integration into the alliances. A more traditional approach might be to develop cooperation through individual faculties or departments, but that risks losing the ‘whole institution’ approach that lies at the heart of a successful alliance," she said.

For Helmeid, the question is "whether, with UK institutions becoming eligible again for Erasmus+ funding, there may be scope to consider how cooperation could develop further in the future". She added: "The interest is certainly there, but we cannot move forward until we know what the modalities and conditions for integration would actually look like."

At Circle U., the legal entity allowed some external funding for King's participation in alliance activities: "We’ve set up a seed fund (an annual call for proposals) of €100,000, funded directly by members and managed centrally by us. Every year, we issue a call for collaborative projects that are truly interdisciplinary and bottom-up."

A five-year evaluation of this mechanism shows that King’s is very active in this area. "Because they no longer have access to European funding, some researchers and academics have used our internal funding to continue participating in Circle U. and collaborating with their colleagues," Guillaume mentioned.

But the Secretary General admitted that €100,000 a year for alliance activities is ridiculously small, especially compared to the €12.8 million the alliance got for the last funding period of four years.

How to reshape partnerships when the UK rejoins Erasmus+

When the UK rejoins Erasmus+, EUGLOH "would be figuring out how to have joint projects funded by the EU. What we might also explore is how to adjust our next core Erasmus+ project", Hemeid said, as her alliance just applied for a two-year bridging fund to cover 2027-2028.

This application was made with UK universities as associated partners, but during the funding period, they might become eligible for EU funding again and the alliance could "explore different models of participation in ongoing or future European projects beyond the current associated partner framework".

But Helmeid noted that this sort of development would need to take into account existing commitments and resource planning within the current consortium.

For Circle U., the timeline is more advantageous: the alliance plans to submit a new application by February or March 2027 and start the new project in November 2027, while it is expected that UK universities will rejoin Erasmus+ and get access to European funding again in 2027.

"For us, this will be really good because we’ll be aligning with what could potentially be the new European funding," Guillaume commented.

Potential additional funds to help UK universities (re)join alliances

"We're hoping that there would be some sort of rejoining fund that would help UK universities get back into Erasmus+, which would give UK partners and their future (or current) alliances the best chance for immediate, meaningful cooperation and action," Helmeid stated.

If the Circle U.'s Secretary General is also hoping for rejoining funds to help UK institutions participate in Erasmus+ activities again, he doubts that it would be possible or used for alliances: "Perhaps even the British would be more receptive to having these funds allocated to traditional mobility and other Erasmus+ initiatives rather than just to the alliances, because UK partners in alliances are fairly limited."