EULiST Mission

From the heart of Europe’s metropolitan areas to peripheral rural regions, our diversity and complementarity drives our ambition to commit to a joint strategy for a structural institutional transformation towards a European University. Despite our differences, our collective motivation is based on a set of shared values and principles. Among these are equality, inclusion, diversity, democracy and peaceful international cooperation. We strive for interdisciplinary and high-impact research while ensuring academic freedom, open data and open science for the general public in order to serve society.

In line with EUA’s 2030 Vision: Universities without Walls, both our diversity and our shared values can allow us to achieve greater compatibility across education and research systems to better serve society through the Europeanisation and internationalisation of EULiST students, researchers, teaching staff, research-supporting staff and administrative staff. Because in line with the objectives of the European Education Area and the European Research Area, in synergy with the European Higher Education Area, we believe in the active role of universities, in mobility and innovation without borders in the digital age, as well as in sustainable development, in life-long learning and in providing future-proof skills for sustainable, long-term employment that match the twin green and digital transition.

At EULiST, we combine our strengths in technology and impactful research to propose an approach that focuses on innovative, yet practical solutions that can be implemented quickly by integrating both universities of technology and comprehensive universities. This enables us to act as a model for and form hubs with other European Universities to create synergies that contribute to the European Strategy for Universities 2022.

To this end, we have defined a guiding principle and have chosen a clear focus based on sustainability: interlinking knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) together with Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to develop solutions to the major societal challenges of today and tomorrow – notably climate change, digital transition and social cohesion. For this purpose, EULiST boosts challenge-based learning to train future generations of students, researchers, scholars and life-long learners to build a more sustainable and globally engaged Europe.

On this way, climate action is more than a unifying ambition for us, but demonstrates how EULiST will transform and prepare our universities for a sustainable future in terms of campus life, education, research, innovation, outreach and internationalisation. At the same time, securing social cohesion is both a prerequisite for and a consequence of climate mitigation, as well as adaptation. True sustainable development therefore needs to consider ecological, economical and societal goals (SDGs).

Our combined capacities will also help propel cooperation between the EULiST regions and contribute to European strategies such as the European Green Deal, through transdisciplinary European projects that will support the regions to act as motors for implementing the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In line with the UN Agenda 2030, particularly SDG 17, our interregional cooperation will be complemented by global multi-stakeholder partnerships to mobilise and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources for globally sustainable development.

You can read our full Mission Statement here.