Europe is of great importance for Leiden University: as an academic discipline, as a funder for research and education activities, and as a legislator, the EU offers us many opportunities.

Europe is also host to our closest academic partner and our university networks: Una Europa, LERU and the Coimbra Group.

Knowledge on European affairs at Leiden University is bundled in our Europe Hub, which is an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to addressing Europe’s most pressing societal challenges, bringing together academics from across our university.

Leiden is committed to European collaboration through the EU framework programmes and to implementing and improving the European initiatives when they concern higher education, always in collaboration with our European partners and friends.

European Programmes

Leiden University takes part in several European research and education programmes and projects. These programmes allow us to offer international activities to our students and researchers. They also give us the chance to collaborate with academic partners across Europe and the world.

Horizon Europe

Many of Leiden's researchers participate in the European Framework Programme. The current one, Horizon Europe, encourages fundamental and applied research through research funding. Horizon Europe focusses for the largest part at funding large, pan-European consortia to take on today's challenges. In these consortium projects, we work together with many academic and societal partners throughout the continent. Other researchers use funding from the European Research Council or the Marie Sklodowska Curie actions to engage in individual, curiosity-driven research.

ERASMUS+

Leiden University participates in the Erasmus+ programme and has been awarded the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education 2021-2027. Read also our Erasmus Policy Statement. We currently offer a wide range of possibilities for exchanges in Europe to our students and annually host around 500 Erasmus students from elsewhere in Europe.

The European Commission has a budget of € 26.2 billion for Erasmus+ 2021-2027. This programme will fund learning mobility and cross-border cooperation projects for 10 million Europeans of all ages and all backgrounds. It will seek to be even more inclusive and to support the green and digital transitions, as set out in the European Education Area. Erasmus+ will also support the resilience of education and training systems in the face of the pandemic.

Erasmus Mundus Partners

Erasmus Mundus is a co-operation and mobility programme in the field of higher education that aims to enhance the quality of European higher education and to promote dialogue and understanding between people and cultures through co-operation with third countries (all countries outside the European Union, with the exception of Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland).