Eucor – The European Campus has a variety of funding sources available for implementing its strategic objectives. The fees of the member universities form the basis for this. The regions and countries in which the Eucor universities are located also fund the alliance through projects and by committing to several years of funding. Eucor – The European Campus has also successfully secured external, third-party funding from the European Union multiple times.
The fees of member universities
The five member universities contribute an annual fee to the budget of Eucor – The European Campus. This fee can be divided into two categories: first, the regular membership fee, which pays for the secretariat and coordination office, its staff, as well as key activities like committee meetings and communication measures (overall sum in 2023: 370,000 euros); second, another fee finances the Seed Money funding instrument that makes it possible to realise new collaborative projects between the member universities (overall sum in 2023: 300,000 euros). Each university’s membership fee is partially based on its number of students.
Regional and national sources of funding
Several institutions and organisations in Germany, France and Switzerland support the work of Eucor – The European Campus:
- The Franco-German University (FGU), which is a network of 213 affiliated universities from France and Germany, receives equal funding from both countries. The FGU supports several joint degree programmes of the member universities. It also helps to finance the PhD programmes QUSTEC and EURIdoc as part of the Franco-German Graduate Schools funding instrument.
- The Ministry of Science, Research and Arts (MWK) of the State of Baden-Württemberg is allocating 5.538 million euros to the University of Freiburg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) for the implementation of the Strategy 2030 of Eucor – The European Campus for the period from 2024 to 2030. In addition, the MWK is funding four professorships, two each at the University of Freiburg and KIT, for a period of six years. These professorships are so-called "cross-border professorships" – joint professorships between German universities and partner universities from France or Switzerland. All information on the cross-border professorships can be found here.
- In the context of the Contrat triennal “Strasbourg Capitale européenne” (Three-year Contract “Strasbourg European Capital”), the regional administrative bodies of Région Grand Est, Collectivité européenne d’Alsace and Eurométropole et Ville de Strasbourg have granted the universities of Strasbourg and Haute-Alsace 1.072 million euros for the period from 2021 to 2023. This is being used to fund projects pertaining to student life, cross-border mobility and joint professorships.
- The Swiss agency Movetia is funding the University of Basel’s participation in activities of the European university alliance EPICUR thanks to the university’s membership in Eucor – The European Campus, which is an EPICUR partner. This funding sum is 920,000 Swiss francs (in addition to the 40% contributed by the University of Basel, making it altogether 1,534 million Swiss francs) for the period from 2023 to 2026.
- For the feasibility study “Innovation Region Fessenheim”, the EGTC, in its role as lead partner, received funding from the French national government, the Région Grand Est, the German Federal Government and the State of Baden-Württemberg totalling 800,000 euros. The feasibility study was conducted from 1 January 2021 to 31 March 2022 and made it possible to develop innovative projects in the Upper Rhine region in a collaboration between the Eucor member universities, the university alliance TriRhenaTech, the Fraunhofer Institutes as well as private companies with the goal of achieving a sustainable transformation of the region.
Funding from the European Union
Eucor – The European Campus helps to implement the European Union’s goals through its projects in research, education and cross-border collaboration. For this, Eucor received financial support from various EU funding programmes.
- The "Eucor – The European Campus: Cross-border Structures" project (in German: Eucor - The European Campus: Grenzüberschreitende Strukturen) was co-financed by the Interreg A Upper Rhine Programme with altogether 2 million euros (with means from the European Regional Development Fund) from 2016 to 2019. This project implemented measures to establish structures that would create the best possible conditions for cross-border cooperation in research and teaching. The member universities were involved in different projects of the Interreg Upper Rhine Programme in the following years as well.
- Eucor – The European Campus was a partner in the project "European Cross-Border Skills", for which it received funding from the Erasmus+ programme from 2017 to 2020.
- The doctoral programme Quantum Science and Technologies at the European Campus (QUSTEC) received funding from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union in 2019. As the organisation responsible for the project, the EGTC Eucor – The European Campus received 4.2 million euros. Together with its partner organisations, it was able to fund 37 doctoral candidates with this money.
- In 2021, the EGTC Eucor – The European Campus was able to attract more funding through Horizon 2020 for a cross-border doctoral programme. Thanks to EURIdoc (Eucor Upper Rhine Immunology doctoral programme), 28 doctoral students are able to conduct research in the area of immunology in the Upper Rhine region. The EU supports EURIdoc with 3 million euros.
Funding from the private sector
For the realisation of the doctoral programme QUSTEC, the EGTC also receives 320,000 euros in funding from Santander Universities, an organisation that supports higher education worldwide.