Run European legislation past universities, sector leaders urge

Universities should be consulted before the introduction of new Brussels legislation to ensure that it will not “hinder” education and research activities, according to the European Universities Association.

In a policy paper published on 9 January, the EUA calls for the European Commission to introduce a “university check” that would “assess the impact of legislation on universities and their activities [in areas including] trade, migration, the digital transformation, rule of law or strategic autonomy”. Universities should be “actively” involved in the check, the organisation says.

Titled A Renewed Social Contract for Europe and its Universities, the paper sets out a series of priorities for the rest of the decade ahead of upcoming European elections. Improved policy coordination, “ambitious” budgets and the enshrining of academic freedom and “open international cooperation” are among the goals presented.  

Alongside the university check, another recommendation the document makes is the establishment of earmarked funding for university leadership development, described as a “crucial” move to “support universities’ institutional development and unleash their transformative potential”.

“I call on European policymakers to seize the next years as an opportunity to foster a long-term vision and governance for European university policies, provide sufficient and predictable funding and investment, and ensure rules that enable rather than restrict – with due consideration for universities’ institutional autonomy,” said EUA president Josep Garrell.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, Thomas Jørgensen, the EUA’s director of policy coordination and foresight, said compliance with EU regulations had become “an increasingly big issue” for universities, prompting the EUA to propose the university check.

“You have all these rules that are not made for universities that impact them,” he said. “There’s an underestimation of how big the sector is and how important it is.”

“We’ve seen this very much in the digital field at the European level,” Dr Jørgensen continued, citing as an example the recent Cyber Resilience Act, which sparked alarm over the obligations it would place on researchers developing and using open-source software. An exemption was ultimately introduced for free open-source software – but, Dr Jørgensen said, the issue could have been avoided had universities been consulted in the drafting phase.

The check could be achieved by “allocating resources within the [European] Commission”, he continued. “I believe that the only pushback will be a resource question – they’ll say, ‘Well, we don’t have the resources to do that.’ At the end of the day, I think it’s much more efficient to do this in the drafting phase [in order to avoid] the whole back and forth and open letters and whatnot.”

Dr Jørgensen said that the EUA aimed to present “big ticket items” for EU policymakers to take up after the elections. “Our goal is [for European universities] to be independent actors,” he said, stressing that institutions were not a “toolbox” for politicians to employ in service of specific societal needs.

The “new social contract” proposed by the policy paper, he explained, should be one that recognised universities as an “equal partner” in the effort to solve global challenges, rather than “an instrument to realise decisions made elsewhere”.

“Universities are part of the common effort, but they’re not just a tool,” Dr Jørgensen stressed. “They’re an active part of that common effort.”

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com