Today, Europe celebrates the first European Doctoral Day. We want to celebrate this initiative, that we are proud to have contributed to making it a reality. This day sends a clear message across Europe: doctoral candidates matter.
In the eyes of many, the role of doctoral candidates is still relegated to the one of students, or “researchers of the future”. This is far from their daily experienced reality, and far from their role in society. Doctoral candidates are already researchers, professionals, innovators, teachers, mentors, and contributors to society. They are a central part of how knowledge is created, challenged, shared, and moved across borders. In this sense, recognising doctoral candidates is essential to any serious discussion about the future of the European Research Area and Higher Education.
Recognition of doctoral candidates as professionals is particularly important at a moment when Europe is debating major policy files that will shape research for years to come, from the ERA Act to the future of the Framework Programme. Eurodoc has consistently argued that Europe’s ambition for a “fifth freedom” (the free movement of knowledge) cannot be achieved without the free, fair, and secure movement of the people who create that knowledge. Doctoral candidates and early-career researchers must therefore be recognised as core actors in the European Research Area, not as an afterthought.
Yet recognition must also be practical. Across Europe, many doctoral candidates and early-career researchers continue to face precarious working conditions, unequal access to social security, fragmented career support, mobility barriers, and increasing pressure with effects on mental health and wellbeing. In our positions on the ERA Act, researcher mobility, and FP10, Eurodoc has stressed that attractive research careers require fair employment, adequate salaries and access to social rights, transparent contracts, sustainable mobility, and long-term investment in independent, curiosity-driven and collaborative research.
European Doctoral Day is therefore not only a celebration. It is also a reminder of institutional responsibility. If Europe wants to remain a global leader in research and innovation, it must invest in doctoral candidates and early-career researchers as the people who make this ambition possible. This commitment also includes the protection of academic freedom, which is under pressure in Europe and globally, and ensuring that all members of the academic community — including those in the most vulnerable career stages — can work, research, speak, and collaborate freely.
To mark this first edition, Eurodoc is also launching a new initiative to collect available guides of doctoral programmes from across Europe, with a particular focus on our community of member National Associations. We aim to make these resources accessible through the Eurodoc website, so that doctoral candidates can more easily find information about their rights, working conditions, doctoral training, supervision, mobility, career development, and support structures in different national contexts.
By bringing these resources together, we want to turn the spirit of European Doctoral Day into something concrete: a practical contribution to better information, stronger representation, and improved conditions for doctoral candidates across Europe.
Today, we celebrate doctoral candidates. But we also renew our call: Europe must recognise them, support them, and include them in shaping the future of research.
The Board of Eurodoc
Nicola Dengo
Aleksandra Lewandowska
Norbert Bencze
Manca Lunder
Magali Weissgerber
Linnéa Carlsson
Luka Savic