VU Rector Prof Rimvydas Petrauskas' Speech on the Occasion of the Visit of the President of France
Your Excellency the President of France Emmanuel Macron, Monsieur Le President,
In September 2017, you delivered your famous Sorbonne speech. This speech formed the basis for the vision in the field of education and culture formulated at the European Union Summit in Gothenburg.
When talking about globalization and the context of Europe’s future you have referred to investment into knowledge and culture as one of the main elements. The element enabling a breakthrough in problem areas.
Your proposals have been based on a belief in the necessity of a deeper European cooperation and the need to accelerate and deepen the European integration projects.
“I have come to talk to you about Europe.... I will not stop talking about it. Because this is where our battle lies, our history, our identity, our horizon, what protects us and gives us a future,” these were the words that you have started your speech with, making kind of a promise to which we have been sincerely responding today.
Your specific proposals have had a resonance and have been included in European Union initiatives and programmes:
1. European students should be able to speak at least two foreign languages by 2024;
2. Increasing student exchange – by 2024, half of students should have spent at least six months in another European country;
3. Setting up networks of European Universities which should become centres of educational innovation and top competences.
In 2018, the European Union published the first call for the creation and funding of European university networks/alliances. Universities have been provided with a significant instrument to deepen cooperation in reaching for long-term goals and establishing sustainable interinstitutional structures. The initiative has been supported by national governments. Thus a realistic opportunity to implement the goals of a unified Europe in the field of education has been created.
In 2019, after an open tender, the European Commission selected 17 networks for funding, including Vilnius University, which together with six other European universities (Bergen, Granada, Graz, Leipzig, Lyon, and Padua) set up the Arqus European University Alliance.
The European project and European integration are currently at the new stage of their development – potentially at a threshold. Free movement of people, goods and ideas, migration and communication resulted in a transition of people into Europeans earlier than they have been explained this by researchers. However, Europe needs a new impetus. The political and cultural elite will determine the directions of its development.
If we want Europe to be more than a geographical and economic unit, we have to develop the political European project and collaborate consistently to come up with a strategic European vision. I am certain that universities will bring their own experience and contribution to this discussion. I strongly believe in the idea of the Europe of Universities and that today we are symbolically contributing to its realization.
New opportunities for cooperation and integration between European higher education institutions have been made possible by your visionary initiative as the President of France. For the first time in many years, the idea of university received new development at the political level.
Your Excellency has started the process of European consolidation of universities which is already significant for us and will become even more significant in the future. You have done this while preserving the idea of a classical university and respect for autonomy.
It is a solid basis and honour for Vilnius University to award you the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa for your contribution to the integration of European universities and the development of the idea of a modern university, while expressing your commitment to the idea of European universities’ cooperation and alliances.
Long live the European Union and the Europe of Universities!