The European Union ministers responsible for higher education met in Brussels on Thursday 29 February for their first informal meeting under the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, to discuss the challenges and prospects for academic mobility, particularly student mobility, within the European area.
Ahead of the first discussion session, Françoise Bertieaux, Minister for Higher Education in the Wallonia-Brussels Region, emphasised the importance of mobility leading to qualifications as a vehicle for European integration and cooperation between Member States, especially in the run-up to the European elections. She pointed out that, despite the fact that education remains a national competence, initiatives such as Erasmus+ or the European Higher Education Area and Education Area (see EUROPE 13186/1, 13187/1) “have enabled immense progress to be made in the higher education system”.
The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the various national realities that influence student mobility, such as the size of education systems, accessibility and the specific regulations in each country.
Juan Cruz Cigudosa, Spain’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities, spoke of the key role played by mobility in building a unified European identity, highlighting Spain’s position as an attractive country for foreign students, while maintaining a balance with the departure of its own students, and as a leader in the formation of several alliances of European universities. He also called on the EU to better fund these dedicated programmes, notably Eramus and the European University Alliances, in order to “reach more people” and “focus on people from low-income families who also need to explore the possibility of training abroad”.
Andrzej Szeptycki, Polish Under-Secretary of State for Science and Higher Education, stressed the need to support students and researchers from non-EU countries such as Ukraine.
Finally, Jens Brandenburg, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, highlighted international cooperation and efforts to overcome mobility restrictions linked to the pandemic. He spoke of the need to overhaul the internationalisation strategy of German universities.
Discussions focused on the attractiveness policies and support measures implemented to encourage this mobility, highlighting the differences in the challenges faced by the various countries, such as the availability of student accommodation or the quality of teaching. The aim was, over the 2 days of informal ministerial meetings, to identify points of convergence and pave the way for future collaboration.
EU ministers will continue their discussions on academic mobility on Friday 1 March (see EUROPE 13360/28). (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)