At the end of 2018 and in 2019, The European Commission, under the Erasmus + program, announced two pilot enrollments as part of the European Universities initiative. It aims to promote common European values and institutionalized cooperation among European universities in the search for a systemic and sustainable impact on society, as well as the quality, efficiency, attractiveness improvements, and international competitiveness of the European education system.

In order to form a transnational alliance of European universities that share the same long-term vision of cooperation, the following institutions: University of Almería (Spain) – coordinating body, Agricultural University of Iceland (Iceland), Agricultural University Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Haute Ecole de la Province de Liège (Belgium), Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra (Portugal), Paris Sup’Biotech (France), Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy) and the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, initiated works on the project application under the European Universities initiative known as The Green European University (UNIgreen).

The project aspires to strengthen the links among education, research, innovation, good practice and knowledge transfer so that the resulting consortium becomes a model European university as far as the areas of Agro, Bio and Life Science are concerned. The project assumes the free flow of knowledge, facilitating the acquisition of double or joint European academic degrees, and attracting talented students from outside Europe by promoting multilingual approaches in studying, interculturalism and increased inclusiveness.

The project is also expected to contribute to the economic transformation at the local and regional levels, and in case of the national level to launch supra-regional networks towards development, innovation and entrepreneurship, strengthening personal and professional skills of people to increase their chances of employment.

Signing the project application as part of The European University competition

On February 17, 2022 the representatives of the universities involved in the UNIgreen consortium met in Brussels to sign a declaration of accession.

The entity responsible for the Rectors’ meeting was the International Relations Office of the HEPL i.e., the Belgian partner university – Haute Ecole de la Province de Liège, which also manages the project at HEPL.