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Updated on: 10/04/2026
The University of Bordeaux’s relationships with its Basque counterparts are fundamental and take various forms. Dedicated to enhancing students’ employability across the shared territory of the Basque Country and Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the EmPACT i3 project engages students to equip them to meet the challenges of transition.
Although Euskampus is not a campus in the physical sense of the word, it brings together the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and the University of Bordeaux across a vast territory stretching from Bilbao to Bordeaux. It is a space for collaboration, brimming with opportunities seized upon by the communities of both institutions, which work together across four key areas: education, research, internationalisation and regional engagement.
For nearly fifteen years, there have been numerous successes, including ten cross-border collaborative laboratories, ranging from neuroscience to quantum physics, more than fifty jointly supervised theses, the introduction of dual degrees and two-way international mobility.
Katixa Peigneguy, coordinator of the cross-border Euskampus campus, was a guest on Euradio earlier this year.
Listen to the interview again
The EmPACT i3* project – standing for ‘employability with impact’ – is one of the key initiatives under the training strand of this strategic partnership, aligning with the institutions’ ambitions regarding transitions, as well as with the multilingualism objectives of this ‘campus without walls’. It draws inspiration from the Ocean i3 project, launched in 2018 and dedicated to plastic pollution along the coastline.
Based on the Challenge-Based Education method, the EmPACT i3 project brings together around forty students at various levels of study (from undergraduate to PhD) from the University of Bordeaux, the University of the Basque Country, as well as Sciences Po Bordeaux and ESTIA, alongside professors and socio-economic stakeholders from both sides of the Pyrenees. All will meet with their counterparts to work on research projects and thus address the concrete challenges relating to transitions faced by stakeholders across this vast territory spanning the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and Euskadi. Teams from Nouvelle-Aquitaine are thus working on issues affecting Basque entities, and vice versa.
The three areas addressed by the EmPACT i3 project are as follows:
Following a 2024/2025 edition that was already highly appreciated by participants and saw eleven projects successfully completed, the 2025/2026 edition was launched in November, with the identification of the projects to be carried out. Once this stage was completed, three meetings between students, professors and socio-economic stakeholders were organised to bring this community to life through discussions on ongoing projects, collaborative workshops, and also as an opportunity to experience the multilingualism at the heart of EmPACT i3.
The first took place on February 13th in the Basque Country in Irún, at the FICOBA exhibition centre, enabling mobility schemes to be set up and ways to communicate together within this linguistic diversity to be identified. Another meeting also took place on March 20th, ahead of a final gathering to be held on May 29th.
Relive the event of February 13th
The final event will take place in May, providing an opportunity to share these practical, locally-rooted projects, which will have enabled everyone to gain a better understanding of the local stakeholders, the challenges they face, and the richness of this intercultural exchange. Further proof of the transformative nature of this partnership between the University of Bordeaux and the University of the Basque Country through Euskampus.
*i3 refers to these three words in Basque: Ikaskuntza / learning, Ikerkuntza / research, Iraunkortasuna / sustainable development
