First Multilateral Agreement within the Erasmus+ Programme Signed!

In February 2021, the University of Opole signed a multidisciplinary multilateral agreement within the Erasmus+ Programme with partner universities belonging to the FORTHEM alliance within the European Universities Network.

The FORTHEM alliance consists of the following universities:Johannes Guthenberg Universitat Mainz, Germany, Universitat de Valencia, Spain, Universite de Bourgogne, France, Universita degli Studi di Palermo, Italy, Latvijas Universitate, Latvia, Jyvaskylan yolipisto, Finland, and University of Opole, Poland.

Work on the final form of the agreement was conducted since November 2020, and involved institutional coordinators of the Erasmus+ programme and staff of international cooperation offices from partner universities. The part of the University of Opole was represented by Karolina Młotek and Magdalena Rudy from the international mobility team of the Office of Research and Project Management.

The provisions of the multidisciplinary multilateral agreement are in force until the end of the next academic year 2021-2022. The agreement extends the exchange opportunities for students, academic staff and non-academic staff between partner universities of the FORTHEM alliance, within the broad range of educational fields included in the agreement.

Compared to previous inter-institutional agreements between individual universities, the multilateral agreement allows for the exchange of a much larger number of mobility participants, in a much broader range of different educational fields.

The agreement is a follow-up to a complex process of harmonisation of partnership agreements and represents a great contribution to the systematisation of mobility cooperation in the FORTHEM alliance. Thereby, the consortium has reached a further stage in the integration between the partner universities. The agreement also allows students from partner universities to take part in FORTHEM Campuses, jointly organised semester-long exchange programmes taking place on rotation host campuses. The first one will be held in autumn 2021 at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France, and another at the University of Latvia in spring 2022.

The signing of another multilateral agreement within the FORTHEM alliance for the new edition of Erasmus+, which will start in 2022, is planned for later this year. It will include an even greater number of fields of education and available courses, as well as broaden the possibility of exchanges of students and employees of partner universities.

Text: Magdalena Rudy

Laura Laamanen, University of Jyvaskyla