European integration is a multi-level process: economic, institutional and, ultimately, cultural. Its evolution to date has been mostly smooth and linear in the simpler areas, while presenting significant difficulties and gaps as the stakes have been raised up the scale of criticality. Surprisingly, the university, as a historical institution with a centuries-old tradition in the European space and a common starting point with the European project itself, has not been used to the maximum extent in all these efforts until today.

This situation is partially corrected, albeit belatedly, by the Institute of the European University. It was launched in 2019 with the first 17 pan-European university collaborations, or better to say “alliances” as they are called, and today their number exceeds 40. Thanks to these alliances, all the multiplier advantages from economies of scale and spectrum, through combination of structures and deepening cooperation of academic potential. In addition, the European university is becoming more competitive in the era of the digital revolution, as well as in a volatile and multipolar global environment where winning innovations provides hegemonic superiority.

Above all, however, the institution of the European University will give new impetus to the permanent and more urgent than ever demand of the European continent for a strong European identity. And this is because, as these alliances strengthen and expand, a new generation of scientists and cultural citizens will be formed, which will be formed within the academic community literally, that is, within an ideally open community, with intellectual freedom, a spirit of philanthropy, equality of opportunity based on meritocracy, respect diversity, transparency and, of course, accountability.

Seven (7) Greek institutions of higher education, including ELMEPA, are participating in these first steps in the establishment of European universities. Our alliance is called ATHENA. The ATHENA Ecosystem consists of nine (9) European Universities and brings together over 167,440 students and 13,845 faculty and administrative staff, including 569 research teams. In addition, more than 53 collaborating bodies (companies, universities, local authorities, chambers of commerce) work together.

Geographical dispersion ATHENA is activated throughout Europe, the cooperation of universities located in the regions of the participating countries. ATHENA’s priorities include support for hybrid mobility, paperless Erasmus, and internationalized common curricula. The Alliance aims to collaborate with partners to train the next generation in the technologies of the 4th industrial revolution, as well as personal skills (soft skills) demanded by the labor market. The alliance is already collaborating, offering more than 150 courses (in English) in the above areas to consortium students. Using ATHENA’s unified learning management system will allow students and faculty from all ATHENA partners to log in from their respective partner systems and select common courses offered by the consortium. Finally, the consortium has developed an electronic platform (Athena Research and Development), where all research activities and structures are registered, which allows any researcher to find cooperation within the consortium. The nearest plans of the Alliance are to spread its actions and policies to all Schools of the consortium.

By the way, the 9th International Erasmus Week was recently held in Chania. The conference was attended by 120 distinguished scientists and administrators from 16 countries. 40 presentations and 3 educational workshops were held, the central theme of which was the internationalization of higher education and the role of digital and social (soft) skills in this work. The topic of digital skills is central to development and will be a key issue in European education policy in the coming years. In this way, ELMEPA contributes in practice to the ongoing dialogue by offering innovative pedagogical proposals and applications.

In the same logic of the internationalization of education, ELMEPA cooperation is also open outside of Europe and especially in the USA.

It is worth noting that of the seven Greek universities participating in the European Universities Initiative, ELMEPA is the only “former university”. By the way, he is the same age as the Institute of European Alliances, i.e. exists in a new statutory form since 2019. It also shows how quickly ELMEPA passed the stages of excellence based on European criteria, although the institution had to adapt to another educational reform that was designed and implemented from above, without fully processing individual parameters or possible unforeseen consequences that would arise along the way. .

However, the ELMEPA example shows that an entity can achieve optimal results if it operates flexibly and mobilizes its human resources correctly. The story of the manifestation of initiative in far from ideal circumstances, when progress did not necessarily take place in stages, but, where necessary, in leaps and bounds.

* Konstantinos Petridis is Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at the Hellenic Mediterranean University (EL.ME.PA).