STARS EU Alliance finalises in Crakow the details of the proposal to the European Commission

With only ten days left until the deadline for the Erasmus+ 2023 European Universities call, the STARS EU Alliance partners have met in Crakow (Poland) to finalise the work started several months ago on the design of the application for funding. The Cracow University of Technology, with its Vicechancellor of Research, Dariusz Bogdal, as respresentative and organizer, held this Steering Comitee meeting during two intensive days of working, 19th and 20th of January.

Fort he first time, the Erasmus+ 2023 European Universities call is open for participation as full partners in the alliances to higher education institutions from all Western Balkans countries, and STARS EU is proud to apply with the Aleksandër Moisiu University of Durrës (Albania). Moreover, this is the first time that our French partner, University of Franche-Comté (France), participate in the call as a full integrated partner.

The Steering Comitee has dedicated these two intense days of work to review the actions carried out during these years of the Alliance; to adjust the actions to be developed in the new four-year period, marked by this call, to the objectives; and to update the ongoing tasks to the incorporation of the new partners.

The new call also offers the opportunity for STARS EU to renew energy and introduce new work packages, in line with the experience acquired, the needs generated by regional realities and the guidelines set by the EU in its policies and objectives.

During this meeting, professor Valeriy Yaschuk, from the department of General Physics at the Nationa Taras Shevchenko University from Kyiv, an associated partner of STARS EU, presented his university’s key figures and the results of his team’s recent research on biological physics, more concretely on telomers structure and function.

The members of the STARS EU alliance plan to keep a strong collaboration with this university and with Prof. Yaschuk’s team in the context of the TIG on Healthy Ageing. They also expressed their sympathy to their Ukrainian colleague for the current situation in his country and conveyed to him their best wishes and their desire for a prompt termination of the war.

The spirit of the STARS EU alliance is strongly Europeanist, of public service, by accelerating the transition to a green and digital model for making our future sustainable, following the 2030 Agenda and always having citizenship at the centre of its actions.

This new Erasmus+ call for proposals will continue the rollout of the European Universities initiative with a record total budget of €387.2 million.

The European Universities’ work encompasses all higher education institutions’ missions of education, research, innovation and service to society. These alliances have diverse models of systemic, structural and sustainable transnational cooperation which reinforce the quality, performance, attractiveness and international competitiveness of higher education across Europe, for the benefit of their students and staff, while promoting our democratic values.