Dear esteemed representatives of public authorities, colleagues, friends, and members of our European Reform University Alliance,
Dear distinguished guests, in your many ranks and capacities, We meet today at a defining moment.
A moment that invites us not only to look back with pride — but to look forward with courage.
We are midway through our Erasmus+ funding phase, and this midpoint is more than just a mark on a timeline. It is a mirror — one that reflects what we have built in the past two years and asks us: what kind of future will we shape in the next two?
In this reflection, we find both a challenge and a promise.
The challenge: to sustain what we have begun.
The promise: that ERUA, born out of imagination and conviction, will become not just an alliance, but a lasting community — one strong enough to give itself form, identity, and future.
ERUA began in 2020 as part of the European Universities Initiative — but even then, it was already something different.
We called ourselves the European Reform University Alliance because reform was not our topic. It was our nature.
From the very beginning, we decided that universities could no longer be mere transmitters of knowledge; they had to be living laboratories — places of curiosity, creation, and courage.
We imagined a university that was:
- Flexible, democratic and participatory in structure;
- Experimental and playful in spirit;
- Human-centred and diverse in its strength.
We built an alliance of five partners, now expanded, whose common ground was not geography or size, but a shared belief: that there is no difference between producing knowledge and producing change.
Our campuses became testing grounds — places where disciplines meet, ideas cross, and structures adapt to questions, not the other way around.
We developed joint strategies, set up participatory governance, launched mapping exercises, staff mobilities, and new forms of teaching weeks and blended learning. Even through the pandemic, when physical mobility stalled, our community did not pause — it transformed.
We learned that mobility is not just a plane ticket; it is a mindset.
And that belonging is not built by proximity, but by participation.
Today, ERUA is unique — geographically, intellectually, and ethically.
From Europe’s East to its West, from North to South, from insular to mainland— we represent the edges of the continent and the edges of thought.
We stand, as we like to say, “on the critical edge”:
where reflection meets innovation, where arts and humanities dialogue with science and technology, and where reform is not an abstract word, but a lived experience.
We are a community of reform-oriented universities.
We defend a student-centred focus.
We foster critical thinking and inclusive participation.
And we believe that universities must give every person — regardless of background — the place to imagine and act differently in a transforming world.
This is what makes ERUA not just a network, but a movement — a movement toward a free, equitable, and democratic Europe.
Reform is not a cosmetic change.
It is not the polishing of old systems.
It is the courage to reimagine the system itself.
To reform is to take what exists — our institutions, our methods, our habits — and to ask, does this still serve the future we dream of?
If not, we dare to transform it.
Reform, in the ERUA sense, is experimental.
It means playing with possibilities.
It means treating universities not as temples of tradition, but as workshops of tomorrow.
It means creating a circular movement — from progress in knowledge to progress in organization, and back again.
Reform is not disruption for its own sake.
It is renewal with purpose.
It is the art of bridging diversity into coherence, the act of weaving a multilingual, multicultural, and multi-perspective community into a single living fabric — the European University of the future.
And because reform begins with people, not structures, our greatest resource is — and always will be — our diversity: of thought, of origin, of experience.
ERUA’s uniqueness lies in this integration of perspectives — humanities, arts, and social sciences in dialogue with STEM — all working together to respond to Europe’s contemporary challenges.
Our vision is not of a single model, but of a shared ecosystem where each university retains its individual traits while contributing to a collective European identity.
In this way, ERUA becomes a microcosm of Europe itself: many voices, one conversation; many paths, one purpose.
Our public value is clear: to reflect critically and act collaboratively in solving the global challenges of our time.
To turn knowledge into understanding, and understanding into action.
And now, midway through our funding phase, this vision demands continuity.
It demands sustainability.
It asks us not merely to cooperate, but to consolidate — to give our experiment a home and a future.
The creation of a legal entity will be the next great step in our reform journey — a sign that our alliance is ready to stand on its own feet, to be durable, to become a model for others.
So today, as we reflect on the past two years and plan for the next two, we are not simply evaluating our activities — we are renewing our commitment to Reform.
We have shown that reform is not an event but a practice.
It is not a destination but a movement.
And it is not a word in our name — it is the heartbeat of our identity.
In the coming years, let us continue to build a university that learns from itself;
that transforms through its own experimentation;
that welcomes contradiction as a source of creativity;
and that serves not only Europe’s knowledge, but its democracy, its diversity, and its humanity.
Because to reform is, ultimately, to care — to care enough to imagine better, and to act on that imagination together.
Thank you.
