EUA Annual Report 2025

2025 saw the EU’s main institutions settling into a new mandate and embarking on a new policy agenda. As such, EUA consolidated its relationships with key policy makers and made the case for higher education and research’s pivotal role during a formative year for the policies that matter most to universities. To this end, EUA proposed a partnership for competitiveness, to bring together the stakeholders and sectors that form Europe’s knowledge base and the policy makers that can create the framework to further develop and leverage it. This informed numerous activities to advance the strategic priority of effective advocacy for the benefit of our members throughout the year, including working towards an ambitiously funded and stand-alone Horizon Europe programme and publishing an in-depth study on the current Erasmus+ programme and the lessons learned for its successor.

In 2025, EUA conducted broad horizon scanning, including numerous strategic foresight activities, on behalf of its members. This included a conference on how to develop future-ready learning and teaching, new findings on how universities can strengthen their financial resilience and analysis of the evolving landscape of university governance across Europe. In addition, the Association shared original research on university sustainability across Europe, following the launch of a campaign to shine a 'Spotlight on Sustainability' during the 2025 Annual Conference in April. In addition, EUA’s Council for Doctoral Education examined the state of play for European doctoral education – 20 years after the adoption of the Salzburg Principles.

The core value of European solidarity again underpinned EUA’s work in 2025. In particular, the Association published principles and guidelines to help its members ensure that academic freedom is a lived daily reality on campus, joined efforts to support at-risk academics – including by implementing the MSCA4Ukraine fellowship scheme, and called for UK universities to return to Erasmus+.

Finally, 2025 brought several milestones in EUA’s work to achieve its strategic priority of enabling enhanced performance among its members. For example, the Association started implementing its first strategic agenda for learning and teaching, published  its vision for a reform of academic careers – complemented by EUA-led activities to make progress across the sector on career assessment and staff development in learning and teaching, and outlined how universities can shape the future of scholarly communication. In addition, during the year a dynamic group of senior professionals from universities in Europe embarked on the pilot edition of EUA’s Leadership Development Programme.

EUA Annual Report 2025

Download