The nine-member Universities and three associated partners of the ATHENA European University are proud to launch the third edition of the Europe Day ATHENATHON, a sporting event destined to reach a distance of 13 000 km. 

Within a month, from 9 May until 9 June, we invite the students and staff of each university, and every person who wants to participate, to join our event and reach our 13 000 km goal, which represents the distance that connects the twelve campuses of our alliance. 
Last year, we managed to reach 31 500km thanks to the participation of all our universities. Let’s beat that record! 

This initiative is embedded in the European Commission's actions for cultural heritage promoting a more global vision of a green and climate-friendly Europe as well as sustainability and resilience. For this reason, we will only consider these carbon-free activities: running, walking, swimming, biking, hiking, aqua-biking, skating, treadmill running, indoor biking, rowing, canoeing, skiing, cross-country skiing, ice-skating, rock-climbing, stair-climbing, etc. 
In order to take part in the event, each participant submits the number of kilometres they travel by posting it on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the official hashtags of the event #move4athena or #athenathon and a screenshot of their favourite tracking app performance as evidence, or by joining our Strava Club: Europe Day ATHENATHON. Each participant can contribute multiple times and join from anywhere in Europe and beyond! 

On Europe Day, Tuesday 9 May, we will launch ATHENATHON and celebrate Europe by travelling through the pictures of cities and campuses collected during the event.  
  
What is Europe Day: 

Europe Day is held on 9 May every year and it celebrates peace and unity in Europe. The date marks the anniversary of the historical “Schuman Declaration”, a speech made by Robert Schuman in Paris in 1950 presenting his idea for a new form of political cooperation in Europe. Schuman's proposal is considered to be the beginning of what is now the European Union. 
  
What is ATHENA European University?  

The European Universities Initiative is a flagship project of the European Union in the field of higher education and research, aimed at making European universities more internationally open, more efficient and inclusive. 

The Advanced Technology Higher Education Network Alliance (ATHENA) is one of the pilot projects of European Universities selected by the European Commission in 2020, bringing together the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (Portugal, coordinator), the Universities of Maribor (Slovenia), Orleans (France), Siegen (Germany), Hellenic Mediterranean University (Greece) Niccolò Cusano University (Italy), Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania), Maria Curie Skłodowska University (Poland) and University of Vigo (Spain).
 
In 2022, ATHENA welcomed three new associated partners: Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (Austria), Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (Ukraine) and Lviv Polytechnic National University (Ukraine).
 
Focused on the theme of the digital transformation of societies, ATHENA's ambition is to create resolutely internationalized training courses, to offer international mobility to the greatest number of students including those with disabilities, to promote the emergence of collaborative projects in research and development and to foster new European perspectives not only to more than 166,000 students and 15,000 staff of the alliance, but also to local communities and partners.