EEI - European Excellence Initiative

The European Excellence Initiative in its widening dimension aims to raise excellence in science and in knowledge valorisation of Europe’s universities through cooperation. The action will engage with universities and empower them further to be actors of change in R&I.

By developing closer cooperation with economic and industrial partners within local and regional innovation ecosystems, academic researchers and support staff will be provided the opportunity to be trained in knowledge valorisation, entrepreneurship, access to finance, at any stage of their careers, and to take into account the variety of academic activities in their career assessment.

Activities need to focus on research and innovation conducted in the higher education sector. Educational activities such as Master or doctoral programmes are out of scope of this call.

The objectives of this action are to:

• Raise excellence in science and in knowledge valorisation through deeper and geographically inclusive strategic cooperation in alliances of higher education institutions, such as – but not limited to – European Universities alliances selected under Erasmus+, with a center of gravity in Widening countries;
• Improve global competitiveness and visibility of Europe’s higher education institutions, creating critical mass in key strategic areas stipulated in the political guidelines for the next European Commission published in July 2024[4] such as the Clean Industrial Deal, the Energy Union, digital tech diffusion, artificial intelligence, the upcoming European Life Science strategy, Union of Skills, etc.;
• Improve researchers career opportunities in line with the ERA policy agenda 2022-24, promoting a balanced circulation of talents, fair and modern research assessment practices in line with the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment[5], diversity, gender equality and inclusiveness, use of open science practices as well as the acquisition of transferable skills.