From Pilots to Progress: Embedding R & I in University Alliances

As European university alliances move beyond their pilot phase, a crucial question is gaining urgency: have these alliances created durable pathways for research and innovation, or are they still operating in experimental mode? This is the central theme of “Pilots without pathways: Alliances and R&I”, a policy event organised by The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities in January 2026.

Bringing together alliance leaders, researchers and policy experts, the purpose is to examine how far the European Universities Initiative has succeeded in embedding research and innovation (R&I) into long-term institutional strategies. While alliances have clearly strengthened transnational collaboration, many R&I activities still rely on short-term projects and pre-existing networks, rather than on stable, systemic frameworks.

A key concern raised during the event was the absence of clear structural pathways linking alliance-level ambitions with European and national research funding instruments. Without more substantial alignment — in governance, funding and career structures — alliances risk remaining collections of promising pilots rather than engines of lasting transformation.

For alliances such as EUTOPIA — which is represented in the meeting by Jo Angouri (University of Warwick) and Balint Marko (Babes-Bolyai University) these reflections resonate strongly. As European cooperation enters a consolidation phase, the challenge is no longer to prove that alliances work, but to ensure that research and innovation are fully integrated into their long-term mission — turning experimentation into sustainable impact for Europe’s research ecosystem.