The Universitat de València, the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz (Germany), the Université de Bourgogne (France), the Jyväskylän yliopisto (Finland), the Uniwersytet Opolski (Poland), Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy) and Latvijas Universitāte de Riga (Latvia) created in 2019 FORTHEM, one of the first 17 winning partnerships of the "European Universities Initiative" call launched by the European Commission. At that time, only 11 Spanish universities joined the funded consortia and the Universitat de València became the first public university in the Valencian Community to do so.

Subsequently, in September 2021, two new universities, Universitetet i Adger (Norway) and Universitatea Lucian Blaga din Sibiu (Romania) decided to join FORTHEM. They were excited to be part of this ambitious project. In March 2022, the nine members of the Alliance, meeting in Valencia, approved the business plan and budgets to submit to the Commission the request for extension and renewal of the Erasmus Plus grant for the next four years. The call, with a total record budget of EUR 272 million, aims at intensifying deep transnational institutional cooperation with the objective of achieving structural, systemic and sustainable change in the European Higher Education Area.  The resolution of this third call was published on 27th July and FORTHEM has been awarded a grant of 14.4 million euros for the next four years (the previous grant was 5 million for three years).

The FORTHEM Alliance aims to bring together a new generation of creative Europeans capable of cooperating in a multicultural and multilingual environment, across borders and across disciplines to address the societal challenges facing Europe.

Over the past three years, FORTHEM has succeeded in establishing a partnership structure that reinforces mutual trust and is based on the joint commitment of the partner universities. A common management structure and decision-making procedures have been put in place that institutionalise permanent and closer academic cooperation. FORTHEM has made significant progress in building a joint campus with versatile physical, virtual and blended mobility for students and staff members. The Alliance has a common digital strategy and tools that enable unprecedented exchanges between the university community. Seven scientific think tanks, the “Labs”, have taken significant steps to address important societal issues and have established a network of different members of society, including schools, businesses, municipalities, chambers of commerce, and public and private sector organisations.

In the upcoming period, the integration of the two new universities in Romania and Norway into the Alliance will be completed and progress will be made towards a “European Campus” with new double, multiple and joint degrees, with a significant increase in mobility and an intense promotion of multilingualism. The nine members look forward to this new chapter, which will further strengthen the ties between them and make Europe a daily reality for the students, staff and researchers of these universities.

FORTHEM on figures

9 universities from 9 different countries

227,255 Degree and Master’s Degree students

2,270 Doctoral students

15,859 academic staff members

14,020 administrative staff members