The European University Initiative (EUI) – launched by the European Commission in 2018 has been received with considerable interest from higher education institutions in Europe with hundreds of institutions forming new alliances. While the EUI-initiative in many ways is a continuation of a long history of collaboration across national borders in Europe, the initiative also contains novel elements – not least with respect to the institutional commitments the new alliances are based on. This paper offers new insights into the alliance formation process, and the profiles of European university alliances. Based on a series of qualitative interviews with key persons at alliance level, our findings demonstrate quite complex alliance formation processes where both collective and individual networks of institutions were activated, and where different path-dependencies shaped the membership of the alliances.

欧盟委员会于 2018 年发起的欧洲大学倡议 (EUI) 引起了欧洲高等教育机构的极大兴趣，数百所机构组成了新的联盟。虽然 EUI 倡议在许多方面是欧洲跨国界合作悠久历史的延续，但该倡议也包含新颖的元素 — — 尤其是新联盟所依据的机构承诺。本文提供了对联盟形成过程和欧洲大学联盟概况的新见解。基于对联盟层面关键人物的一系列定性访谈，我们的研究结果表明，联盟形成过程相当复杂，集体和个人的机构网络都被激活，不同的路径依赖塑造了联盟的成员资格。