Ministerial Declarations & Communiqués
- Bucharest Communiqué (April 2012) (PDF)
- Budapest and Vienna Declaration on the European Higher Education Area (March 2010) (PDF)
- Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve Communiqué (April 2009) (PDF)
- London Communiqué (May 2007) (PDF)
- Bergen Communiqué (May 2005) (PDF)
- Berlin Communiqué (Sept 2003) (PDF)
- Prague Communiqué (May 2001) (PDF)
- Bologna Declaration (June 1999) (PDF)
- Sorbonne Joint Declaration (June 1998) (PDF)
The 6 objectives "of primary importance" identified in the 1999 Bologna Declaration were:
- Adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees.
- Adoption of a system essentially based on two main cycles, undergraduate and postgraduate.
- Establishment of a system of credits – such as in the European Credit Transfer System.
- Promotion of mobility by overcoming obstacles to the effective exercise of free movement.
- Promotion of European co-operation in quality assurance with a view to developing comparable criteria and methodologies.
- Promotion of the necessary European dimensions in higher education, particularly with regards to curricular development, inter-institutional co-operation, mobility schemes and integrated programmes of study, training and research.
The 2012 Bucharest Ministerial Conference brought together 47 European Higher Education Area ministerial delegations, the European Commission, as well as the Bologna Process consultative members and Bologna Follow-Up Group partners. The meeting was an opportunity to take stock of progress of the Bologna Process and set out the key policy issues for the future. The EHEA ministers jointly adopted the Bucharest Ministerial Communiqué, committing to further the Bologna goals until 2020.
The 2012 Bologna Policy Forum aimed to intensify policy dialogue and cooperation with partners across the world. The theme of the third Bologna Policy forum was "Beyond the Bologna process: Creating and connecting national, regional and global higher education spaces”. The Policy forum had four sub-themes, namely: “Global academic mobility: Incentives and barriers, balances and imbalances”; “Global and regional approaches to quality enhancement of Higher Education”; “Public responsibility for and of HE within national and regional context”; “The contribution of Higher Education reforms to enhancing graduate employability”.
Having outlined the main EHEA goals in the coming years, Ministers set out the following priorities for action by 2015:
At the national level, together with the relevant stakeholders, and especially with higher education institutions:
Reflect thoroughly on the findings of the 2012 Bologna Implementation Report and take into account its conclusions and recommendations;
Strengthen policies of widening overall access and raising completion rates, including measures targeting the increased participation of underrepresented groups;
Establish conditions that foster student-centred learning, innovative teaching methods and a supportive and inspiring working and learning environment, while continuing to involve students and staff in governance structures at all levels;
Allow EQAR-registered quality assurance agencies to perform their activities across the EHEA, while complying with national requirements;
Work to enhance employability, lifelong learning, problem-solving and entrepreneurial skills through improved cooperation with employers, especially in the development of educational programmes;
Ensure that qualifications frameworks, ECTS and Diploma Supplement implementation is based on learning outcomes;
Invite countries that cannot finalise the implementation of national qualifications frameworks compatible with QF-EHEA by the end of 2012 to redouble their efforts and submit a revised roadmap for this task;
Implement the recommendations of the strategy “Mobility for better learning” and work towards full portability of national grants and loans across the EHEA;
Review national legislation to fully comply with the Lisbon Recognition Convention and promote the use of the EAR-manual to advance recognition practices;
Encourage knowledge-based alliances in the EHEA, focusing on research and technology.
At the European level, in preparation of the Ministerial Conference in 2015 and together with relevant stakeholders:
Ask Eurostat, Eurydice and Eurostudent to monitor progress in the implementation of the Bologna Process reforms and the strategy “Mobility for better learning”;
Develop a system of voluntary peer learning and reviewing by 2013 in countries which request it and initiate a pilot project to promote peer learning on the social dimension of higher education;
Develop a proposal for a revised version of the ESG for adoption;
Promote quality, transparency, employability and mobility in the third cycle, while also building additional bridges between the EHEA and the ERA;
Work to ensure that the ECTS Users’ Guide fully reflects the state of on-going work on learning outcomes and recognition of prior learning;
Coordinate the work of ensuring that qualifications frameworks work in practice, emphasising their link to learning outcomes and explore how the QF-EHEA could take account of short cycle qualifications in national contexts;
Support the work of a pathfinder group of countries exploring ways to achieve the automatic academic recognition of comparable degrees;
Examine national legislation and practices relating to joint programmes and degrees as a way to dismantle obstacles to cooperation and mobility embedded in national contexts;
Evaluate the implementation of the “EHEA in a Global Setting” Strategy;
Develop EHEA guidelines for transparency policies and continue to monitor current and developing transparency tools.
Please click here for Conference documentation
Please click here for the Bologna Policy Forum statement
Ministers responsible for higher education in the countries participating in the Bologna Process, met in Budapest and Vienna on March 11 and 12, 2010 to launch the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), as envisaged in the Bologna Declaration of 1999. This summit saw the accession of Kazakhstan to the Process, bringing the number of participating countries to 47.
- Ministers took note of the independent assessment and the stakeholders’ reports and welcomed their affirmation that institutions of higher education, staff and students increasingly identify with the goals of the Bologna Process.
- Ministers repeated their committment to the full and proper implementation of the agreed objectives and the agenda for the next decade set by the Leuven/Louvain-la- Neuve Communiqué. They called upon all actors involved to facilitate an inspiring working and learning environment and to foster student-centred learning as a way of empowering the learner in all forms of education, providing the best solution for sustainable and flexible learning paths.
Please click here for Conference documentation
Ten years after the historical Bologna Declaration that structurally reshaped European higher education, another Ministerial Conference was held in Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium).
The Benelux Ministers invited their European Colleagues in charge of higher education in the 46 countries participating in the Bologna Process, to jointly define political orientations for the coming 10 years.
Bologna is more than mere convergence of policies set by public authorities. Higher education institutions, staff and students all together have made an impressive contribution to the implementation and will continue to define the shape of the European Higher Education Area.
Discussion focused on: achievements and consolidation; higher education priorities for the decade to come; equitable access and completion; lifelong learning; graduate employability; student mobility. Furthermore, the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG) was entrusted to prepare a work plan up to 2012 to
take forward the priorities identified in this Communiqué and the recommendations of
the reports submitted to this Ministerial conference, allowing the future integration of
the outcome of the independent assessment of the Bologna Process.
In particular the BFUG was asked:
• To define the indicators used for measuring and monitoring mobility and the
social dimension in conjunction with the data collection;
• To consider how balanced mobility could be achieved within the EHEA;
• To monitor the development of the transparency mechanisms and to report
back to the 2012 ministerial conference;
• To set up a network, making optimal use of existing structures, for better
information on and promotion of the Bologna Process outside the EHEA;
• To follow-up on the recommendations of analysis of the national action plans on
recognition.
Please click here for Conference documentation
The fifth Ministerial summit was held in London in May 2007, which saw the accession of the Republic of Montenegro to the Process, bringing the number of participating countries to 46. As well as reporting that good progress has been made towards the creation of the EHEA since the Bergen summit in 2005, ministers agreed that the focus should continue to be on the implementation of existing action lines in the next two years. No new action lines for the Bologna Process were proposed.
- Ministers adopted a proposal for a Register of European Higher Education Quality Assurance Agencies (REHEQA), which will provide information regarding the alignment of quality assurance agencies with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESGs).
- The Communiqué clarified that the Framework for Qualifications of the EHEA will remain the qualifications framework for HE qualifications in Europe. The European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF), proposed by the European Commission in 2006, will support mobility between HE and other types of learning
- The social dimension of HE was highlighted. Ministers agreed to report back in 2009 on national measures to widen participation in HE. Commitment to increasing mobility was confirmed as one of the key objectives of the Bologna Process. Ministers called upon Eurostat and Eurostudent to develop comparable and reliable indicators to measure progress in increasing staff and student mobility.
- Ministers called for a close alignment between the EHEA and the European Research Area (ERA), and all HEIs were asked to reinforce their efforts to develop career paths and opportunities for doctoral candidates and early stage researchers.
The intergovernmental conference on the Bologna Process held in Bergen in May 2005 provided an opportunity for a mid-term review of progress made towards realising the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by the 2010 target date. As well as confirming their commitment to all aspects and actions of the Process to date, the ministers accepted there was a need to "build capacity at both institutional and governmental level" in order to achieve the stated goals. The 2005 Bergen Communiqué urges:
- The development of national and European frameworks for qualifications, and "improved recognition of prior learning including [.....] non-formal and informal learning for access to, and as elements in, higher education programmes".
- Enhancement of quality in institutions through the systematic introduction of internal mechanisms and their direct correlation to external quality assurance.
- "The importance of higher education in further enhancing research ..... and the importance of research and research training in maintaining and improving the quality of and enhancing the competitiveness and attractiveness of the EHEA".
In their Berlin Communiqué (issued September 2003) ministers responsible for higher education of the (now 33) signatory states reaffirmed their commitment to all previous objectives, noted the role of the Bologna Process in achieving the goal of the 2000 Lisbon EU Council, and determined to "secure closer links overall between the higher education and research systems ...thus strengthening the basis of the Europe of Knowledge".
Additional actions identified by Ministers for the period 2003-05 were placed in the context of the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area representing two essential pillars of the knowledge-based society envisaged in the Lisbon strategy.
- Recognition of the doctoral level as the third cycle in the Bologna Process (the first being the Bachelor level and the second the Masters level), increased mobility at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels and increased cooperation in doctoral studies and the training of young researchers.
- Ministers asked higher education institutions "to increase the role and relevance of research to technological, social and cultural evolution and to the needs of society".
- Ministers acknowledged that the achievement of these goals "requires strong support, including financial and appropriate decisions from national governments and European bodies".
Two years after the Bologna Declaration, European ministers with responsibility for higher education representing 32 signatory states, met in Prague in May 2001 to review progress and set priorities for the next two-year period.
Three new objectives were added to the Bologna six in the Prague Communiqué of May 2001:
- Inclusion of lifelong learning strategies to face the challenges of competitiveness and the use of new technologies, and to improve social cohesion, equal opportunities and the quality of life.
- The involvement of universities and other higher education institutions and of students as competent, active and constructive partners in the establishment and shaping of a European Higher Education Area.
- .Promoting the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area.