Language alliances and language policy: A focus on UNITA-Universitas Montium

Promoting multilingualism and plurilingualism is a cornerstone of the European identity and citizenship concept (Council Recommendation of 22 May 2019 on a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages (Council of Europe, 2019)) and a key action within the European Universities Initiative (EUI) projects. Among the current sixty-five alliances, most incorporate the multilingualism objective into a dedicated work package, adopting various approaches (Gazzola et al. 2024; Castellotti et al. 2024; Conceiçao and Zanola 2024). These include establishing a shared language policy within the alliance, offering a catalogue of language courses available through dedicated portals and organising and recognising both formal and informal language learning activities (Castellotti et al. 2024). However, in the EUI landscape, UNITA-Universitas Montium has managed to build a multi-level educational system for a diverse audience that engages with the various activities of the alliance and that promotes intercomprehension between romance languages for academic purposes (Garbarino and Lesparre 2024; Mantegna 2023; Fiorentino et al. 2024; De Poli et al. forthcoming). The latter approach, which has been the subject of numerous research projects and publications since the early 1990s (Bonvino and Garbarino 2022; Degache 2021), is feasible due to the linguistic homogeneity of the alliance, composed of universities based in Romance-language-speaking countries. This paper focuses on the UNITA approach to linguistic diversity as a strategy for fostering the community of students, teachers and administrative staff within the alliance, as well as enhancing international mobility to meet the ambitious 50% goal set by the EUI call.