A Milestone for Transform4Europe Cooperation
From Vision to Legal Reality: Transform4Europe Redefines What It Means to Be a European University Alliance
Interview by Tomasz Janocha with Prof. Tomasz Pietrzykowski and Dr. Mauro Arturo Rivera León.
As the Transform4Europe alliance takes a decisive step towards institutional maturity by gaining legal personality, a new chapter opens for cross-border academic cooperation in Europe. What once functioned as a network of partner universities now evolves into a structured entity ready to pursue long-term goals. In this exclusive interview, representatives of the University of Silesia in Katowice reveal how this transformation reshapes the future of European higher education alliances.
Tomasz Janocha: What does obtaining legal personality mean for the Transform4Europe alliance? What new opportunities does it open up for the partner universities involved in the consortium?
Mauro Arturo Rivera León, PhD, DLitt: Legal personhood is a crucial aspect for any university alliance. Since long, the European Commission has been pushing forward in the direction of formalizing alliances. Without a legal personality, cooperation develops “informally,” on the basis of day-to-day agreements.
In turn, legal personality implies that an institutional framework has been settled. At the University of Silesia in Katowice, we are convinced that the legal entity offers multiple opportunities. Firstly, it guarantees that the alliance will be able to seek further funding in the future, as it is likely that legal personality will be a requirement in future initiatives. Second, it strongly provides incentives for T4EU to last well beyond the initial funded phase. It is a qualitative leap for T4EU.
TJ: What were the main legal and organisational challenges that had to be overcome in order to establish the alliance’s legal personality?
MARL: We faced both types of problems. Let me start with the latter.
Legally, choosing a legal entity was very challenging. If people take a look at the legal entity adopted, they could say, “Well, T4EU is opening an association in Germany. What’s so complicated about that?” Yet, an association under national law is far from fulfilling all the needs of the T4EU consortium (spoiler: no available legal entity currently fulfills said needs).
Initially, we made an atlas of all the options chosen by the existing alliances, both regarding European law options as well as those envisaged by national law. An ideal option would be to have an association created under European law. Not only would it signal a more substantial commitment to European values, but it would also provide a more transparent legal framework that does not put any university at an imbalance regarding expertise in a given legal regime. However, the Economic Interest Grouping and the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation had some significant problems we detected. There is also a proposal discussed in European institutions to create a European Cross-Border Association which looks very promising, but it remains without formal approval.
Having discarded those options, we needed to seek a national association that would fulfill our objectives as best as possible. Legally, it was very complicated to assess all the available associations, which are as many as legal orders represented in T4EU. Therefore, we relied on the knowledge of legal experts appointed by the partner universities to the Legal Drafting Group. Their help was pivotal in ranking the options through a decision matrix.
On the second hand, organizationally, our task was a big challenge. Even if USil led the task, we had one legal expert appointed to the group by each partner university. There is a common stereotype that lawyers often disagree on every point, so imagine a group formed by ten of them. We were fortunate enough to have great members from every university who sought to cooperate and compromise as much as possible. At the drafting stage, USil was also deeply helped by Prof. Dominik Brodowski and his team from Saarland University, for which we are also grateful.
Prof. Pietrzykowski, leading the legal drafting group, also established clear rules for cooperation and I think that joint collaborative methodologies like the decision matrix also allowed us to reach consensus faster.
TJ: How will this new legal status affect the functioning of the alliance in terms of scientific, educational, and administrative cooperation between the member universities?
MARL: I believe that the legal status will strengthen the cooperation and, in time, institutionalize it. It will prevent the cooperation from slowly fading away, as sometimes happened with other types of inter-university cooperation formed solely to obtain specific funding.
At this stage, the legal entity will have few tasks, to allow the incremental building of institutional memory and in the future we will start using it and deploying it more effectively.
TJ: Will the granting of legal personality influence the way Transform4Europe projects are financed or how external funding, for instance from EU programmes, can be obtained?
MARL: Yes, at least that is one of the main plans. As we know, we are slowly heading to the end of the funding of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Funding is essential for T4EU to conduct research activities, joint programs, academic exchanges, and so forth. While we are firmly committed to keeping on cooperating even without external funding, funding itself enhances what we can do.
There is strong evidence suggesting that future EU programs will grant funding only to those alliances that materialized as an association. Thus, it is likely that in the future it will be our legal entity formally applying for or administering the funds. If those requirements materialize, as they likely will, we will be ready.
TJ: Looking ahead, what are the key goals and directions for the alliance’s development following the acquisition of legal personality? Are any new initiatives planned within this framework?
MARL: As to the legal entity, even if we are signing now the bylaws of the association, paradoxically this is just the beginning of a long road seeking a final legal entity. As mentioned before, and as we concluded in our internal reports, even the association we are choosing has many disadvantages.
National law and the currently existing European associations are not entirely suitable for allowing alliances to operate. In other words, we are doing our best with the legal tools we have, but they are far from perfect.
One of the plans we have is to keep monitoring the developments of more suitable legal entities, such as the European Cross-Border Association, or perhaps others that EU institutions may design to fit our purposes better. Part of our plan, outlined in our internal reports, is to transition to more suitable entities once the possibility exists. In the meantime, while we monitor for better options that are in the making, we will keep on building our expertise and slowly granting more prominence to the legal entity.
Prof. Tomasz Pietrzykowski: The establishment of a legal entity is not an end in itself; its purpose is to provide a stable and reliable instrument for various T4EU initiatives. We recognise that, in the long run, an increasing number of joint initiatives may be hosted within our legal entity rather than under the existing form of an academic consortium. Sooner or later, the positions of the alliance secretary general and our newly established joint grant office will operate within the framework of the association, rather than remaining hosted by one of our partner universities.
TJ: What benefits of formalising the alliance’s structure will be felt most strongly by students and staff across the Transform4Europe universities?
TP: First and foremost, it serves stability. We must ensure that the current structure of joint initiatives evolves into something far broader than a series of incidental projects. We experiment with various formats of joint programmes, diplomas, short-term mobilities, educational tracks, and research collaborations to make them a permanent and indispensable part of what each of our universities offers to staff and students. The institutionalisation of our collaboration is a key instrument in achieving this. It is highly likely that holding legal status will become a prerequisite for alliances to gain access to European funding for various initiatives. There can be no doubt as to how directly such funding translates into tangible benefits for our communities.
TJ: How do you see the role of the University of Silesia within the alliance now that Transform4Europe has become a legal entity? What opportunities or responsibilities arise from this new stage of collaboration?
TP: We feel fully responsible for the future of our collaboration. T4EU plays a strategic role within our network of international academic relations. As the world becomes increasingly unstable and unpredictable, such close ties and our trusted, long-standing partners become more important than ever. We firmly believe that by reinforcing these connections, we enhance the opportunities for every member of our communities to make their academic experience richer and more rewarding. The more of our colleagues participate in at least one T4EU initiative, the more evidence we accumulate to support this belief.
