Institutional Network of the Universities from the Capitals of Europe

The Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe (UNICA) is a network of 44 universities, gathering major higher education institutions in the European capital cities. It was founded in 1990 on the initiative of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. The mission of the network, which has a combined strength of over 120,000 staff and 1,500,000 students, is to promote academic excellence, integration and co-operation among its member universities throughout Europe. It also seeks to be a driving force in the development of the Bologna process and to facilitate the integration of universities from Central and Eastern Europe into the European Higher Education Area. The office of the network is located in the University Foundation in Brussels.

UNICA activities are divided into five main categories or clusters:

For the implementation and achievement of the UNICA Internationalisation and Mobility goals, the international relations officers (IROs) from member universities play a main role. IROs meet at least once a year to discuss UNICA approaches, initiatives and policies in the field of higher education. Projects and collaboration in member universities are developed within UNICA working groups.

Organised every two years, UNICA Student Conference gathers students from UNICA Member Universities for a three-day meeting during which they examine and debate on Europe’s most pertinent issues. The meeting’s objective is to encourage the participants to share their views and develop their recommendations while working in multinational and multicultural teams. A final publication, sent later to the European Commission for its consideration, gathers the conclusions and suggestions of the students.

UNICA promotes and facilitates student exchanges within the network. One of the actions is enhancing student Mobility through the online information platform European Campus. The latter is an initiative of both UNICA and Youth Agora. This online platform is supported by the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Commission. The European Campus collects information about master programmes and stories with the help of new technologies. It provides students a European-wide search facility through master programmes of the European Campus.

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