Preparing over repairing? Projectified policymaking in pandemic times

The European Union’s policies addressing universities such as EU research, higher educati on, and regional policy are guided by different politics – excellence, mobility, cohesion. With the Covid- 19 pandemic, a further mission has joined EU policymaking guided at universities: resilience. As a catch- all term, resilience subsumes various measures that ought to strengthen both the EU’s response for the current situation and its preparation for future challenges. The EU’s crisis response not only provided for novel measures guided by the resilience imperative, but pre-existing measures were also aligned with the supranational repair and prepare agenda. One central example of measures that were aligned with pandemic policy making is the European Universities Initiative. It was launched shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic struck EU higher education systems and from its outset was concerned with the preparation of universities for the future. The initiative is an instance of projectified policymaking, which is a policy mode that has served the European Commission to advance novel ideas in areas that are not at the competence of the EU. At the example of the European Universities Initiative this contribution scrutinizes the role of projectified policymaking during times of crisis. It will reveal how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected projectified formats of policymaking and thus their role in shaping new policy initiatives. The analysis focuses on the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on EU policymaking guided at universities and relies on interviews conducted with European University alliance representatives and with actors from different knowledge policy venues at EU level.