The European Universities initiative supports higher education institutions to achieve greater quality, performance, attractiveness and international competitiveness. It promotes common European values and a strengthened European identity. The initiative does this by setting innovative and diverse models of long-term institutionalised cooperation between higher education institutions (HEIs) across Europe. The initiative is implemented under Erasmus+ through a series of calls for proposals.

The 2023 call attracted a total of 65 proposals for the two topics: “Intensification of prior deep institutional transnational cooperation” and “Development of new deep institutional transnational cooperation”. The call gathered around 500 higher education institutions as full partners.

In total, the call covers 26 EU Member States, five third countries associated with the Erasmus+ programme and four countries from the Western Balkans.