IECO’s activities relate to following action fields: 1. Research, 2.  Higher Education and 3. Technology and Knowledge transfer. These are complementary to each other and are also interconnected. Implementing partners of IECO jointly work to develop and implement these proposals and the required administrative and institutional structures required for their functioning.

The founding universities of IECO aim to increase their joint activities such as: 1. research proposals, 2. scientific publications, 3. conferences and workshops held by each IECO-Partner at their organisations, 4. research and development activities with industry, 5. dialogues with societal stakeholders, 6. student activities, 7. international visits and workshops. They also aim at pro-actively involve further IECO-Partners from the IECO Network into their activities.