The Alliance’s name stems from the Latin term arcus/arquus, for arch, representing the strong foundations the consortium has laid since 2018 to build bridges towards a shared future, to respond to the grand global societal challenges and to advance towards deeper European integration.
The Arqus European University Alliance brings together the universities of Granada, Graz, Leipzig, Lyon 1, Maynooth, Minho, Padua, Vilnius and Wroclaw, nine longstanding comprehensive research universities who share extensive experience in joint projects and a common profile as internationalized institutions with deep regional engagement in medium-sized cities.
Arqus aspires to build on the member universities’ sound prior experience in cooperation in order to achieve a high level of integration in its members’ policies and action plans in order to:
The principal ambition of the Arqus European University Alliance is to act jointly as a laboratory for institutional learning from which to move forward in the design, testing and implementation of an innovative model for deep inter-university cooperation.
The Alliance aims to consolidate a joint governance structure to facilitate the development of consensual joint policies and action plans, to consolidate participative structures to facilitate cross-cutting integration at all levels of the partner institutions, and to share its experience with other groupings in order to communicate the added value to be found in its model of integration.
The Arqus European University Alliance was formally established in Brussels on 27 November 2018 when the rectors and presidents of our member institutions signed a Memorandum of Understanding in order to strengthen the cooperative links which already exist between and among us.
