The European ministers responsible for higher education are due to meet at the Palais d’Egmont (Brussels) for an informal meeting, under the Belgian Presidency, scheduled for 29 February and 1 March.
The aim of the meeting is to strengthen student mobility and academic cooperation across Europe, presented as pillars of European integration and the European Higher Education Area. This project, which is closely linked to the Bologna Process, launched in 1999 with the signing of the Bologna Declaration by 29 nations and which now includes 48 member countries, aims to standardise university systems in Europe in order to promote the movement of students and teachers while guaranteeing the quality of higher education in the member countries.
Over the course of the 2 days, the aim will be to encourage cultural and linguistic exchange and to harmonise education systems within the EU.
Student mobility and the Erasmus+ programme, the keystone of this issue, will be at the heart of the discussions.
The aim of this meeting is to discuss degree mobility, enabling students to complete their course or obtain a qualification in a country other than their country of origin. This initiative reflects the European Union’s desire to promote mobility that is fair and beneficial to all, and to meet the training needs of Europe’s various socio-economic and cultural sectors.
The planned discussions will focus on a number of areas, including assessing the attractiveness policies of the various Member States, identifying the regulatory and practical obstacles to mobility and examining the incentives in place to encourage students to study abroad.
The realities of each Member State - influenced by the size of their education systems, their accessibility - and national policies will be examined. Major differences in the difficulties encountered, such as the availability of student accommodation or the quality of teaching, will also be discussed.
The meeting will begin on the first day with introductory presentations by an OECD expert and a professor from UCLouvain, followed by a panel of five Member States (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain) who will share their national experiences on student mobility, in order to identify common interests and explore future collaborations.
The second day will be devoted to a round table of European ministers for higher education, intended as a platform for sharing best practices and reflecting on actions at national and European level to support student mobility.
Discussions will need to establish how to make it broader, fairer and more beneficial, by defining courses of action.
At the end of these meetings, the Belgian Presidency plans to produce a summary document to pave the way for concrete initiatives to advance these issues in higher education within the EU.
The meeting document: https://aeur.eu/f/b23 (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)