The government has made €500,000 available for a second round of the European Universities initiative, asking institutes to apply for the funding as part of a project that has already seen Trinity and Dublin City University (DCU) create partnerships with EU universities.
Minister for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor today asked Irish third-level institutes to apply to participate in the second round of the project, in a bid to create closer ties between EU universities.
In a press statement today, Mitchell O’Connor said she was “delighted” to have secured funding for third-level institutes still seeking to apply to the project.
She added: “I am determined that we will provide our students with the best opportunities we can offer, without frontiers of geography or discipline.”
“The European Universities initiative”, she said, “is about collaboration and partnerships, promoting research, collaboration and partnerships across borders, across languages and across disciplines”.
In the first round of the initiative, 17 “European Universities” were chosen from 54 applications made up of university alliances from around the EU.
Trinity was chosen for an application it made with the University of Barcelona, the University of Montpellier, Utrecht University and Eotvos Lorand University.
Trinity originally signed the agreement with its new partners in January 2019, creating the CHARM European University.
The name CHARM stands for the basic pillars on which the alliance is based: challenge driven, accessible, research based and mobile.
The European Commission will soon open applications for a second round.
The initiative aims to create several “European Universities” by 2024, consisting of alliances of bottom-up networks of universities across the EU that will enable students to obtain a degree by combining studies in several EU countries and contribute to the international competitiveness of European universities.
DCU is a member of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities.
Mitchell O’Connor said: “We want with this round to build on this achievement and to support further collaborations and innovative practices.”
