Arqus participates in the II Forum of Universities for the Future of Europe

The Arqus Alliance is participating today and tomorrow, 14^th and 15^th September, in the II Forum of Universities for the Future of Europe, organised by the Spanish Ministry of Universities in Barcelona in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The event will gather together members of all the Alliances of the European Commission’s initiative of European Universities.

After the first Forum held in Versailles during the French Presidency in 2022, the Spanish Presidency, which will last until the end of December 2023, holds this second event devoted to the role of higher education institutions in the future of Europe.

The 2 plenary sessions of the event are planned for today and they will focus on how to bring European Universities closer to European society and the challenges faced by national governments and institutions:

• 10:00 – 11:30 CEST: Plenary Session I. European Universities Initiative: Transformative Potential & Challenges for National Governments and Institutions.
• 12:00 – 13:30 CEST: Plenary session II. Bringing the European Universities initiative closer to European society.

Among the specific topics that will be approached during the 8 programmed parallel sessions are the European Degree label, the research and innovation activities of European Alliances, their European legal status, the monitoring framework for the European Universities initiative, the external and social dimensions of European partnerships, the financial sustainability of the Alliances, and the European quality assurance and automatic recognition system.

The Forum will include the participation of representatives from the European Commission in the sector of higher education, ministerial representatives with powers in universities, representatives of other territorial administrations, coordinators and partner members of European University Alliances, the business and social world, universities that are not integrated into any Alliance, student associations, as well as quality agencies of the various Member States.

All the Forum sessions will be broadcast live through the Forum website. Online participants will be able to contribute to the live discussion too.

Dorothy Kelly, Arqus Coordinator, Pedro Mercado, Rector of the University of Granada, Rui Vieira de Castro, Rector of the University of Minho, Patrycja Matusz, Vice-Rector for Projects and International Relations at the University of Wrocław, and Fernando Galán, Arqus Consortium Manager, will participate in the Forum.

Dorothy Kelly will moderate the thematic session dedicated to the European Degree label that will take place today, from 15:00 to 16:30 CEST. In this session, the main objectives and added value of the pilot project EDLab, led by Arqus, ENLIGHT, EUTOPIA and SEA-EU Alliances and coordinated by the University of Granada, as well as the ED-AFFICHE, FOCI, JEDI, ETIKETE, SMARTT pilots, will be presented. Fernando Galán will participate as a speaker in the last session of the day focused on the monitoring framework for the European Universities (from 16:45 to 18:15 CEST).

According to the Arqus Coordinator, Dorothy Kelly, “the II Forum of universities held in the framework of the Spanish Presidency comes at a period of challenges for the Member States and the European Union as a whole. By transforming the foundations of university teaching, research and governance, European Universities are playing a fundamental role in deepening the European identity based on common values, as well as leading the response to the digital and green transitions. This Forum aims to advance important conclusions on key issues affecting the European dimension of higher education in our continent, such as the legal status of the Alliances and the European Degree label”.