Sarajevo - The 4th meeting of the Joint Education Reform Initiative of South Eastern Europe (ERI SEE) and Regional Cooperation Council’s (RCC) Working Group on Recognition of Academic Qualifications (WG RAQ) took place in Sarajevo today.  

The leaders of the Western Balkans Six (WB6) have recognized the importance of development of automatic recognition procedures of the academic qualifications in the region under the Mobility pillar of the Multiannual Action Plan on the Regional Economic Area (MAP REA) with an aim of endorsing a model for  automatic recognition of academic qualifications at the next Prime Ministers Summit to be held in July 2019 in Poland. To this end the participants agreed on the intense and dynamic plan aimed at defining and agreeing on the model for automatic recognition of academic qualifications ahead of the Summit.

Furthermore, the participants of the WG RAQ continued with the implementation of the joint recognition exercise for the WB6 launched at the previous meeting whereby real case studies of  academic qualifications from both the region and the world were assessed in line with respective national procedures to determine similarities and differences in procedures and practice of recognition of academic qualifications in the Western Balkans. The outcomes of the exercise will inform the decision on the model for the automatic recognition of academic qualifications. 

Colin Tuck, Director of EQAR,  official register of quality assurance/accreditation agencies for higher education complying with agreed European standards and guidelines (ESG), presented the European Standards and Guidelines on Quality Assurance at the meeting, which was followed by  discussion on compliance of existing Quality Assurance systems with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in individual WB economies.  

In addition a joint online system which will support cooperation and automatic recognition between WB economies developed jointly between RCC and ERI SEE based on the agreements made in the previous meetings was presented for further fine-tuning. The joint online system will be launched at the Prime Ministers Summit in July 2019, Poland.

The WG RAQ meeting gathered representatives of Ministries of Education,  the European Network of Information Centres (ENIC)/National Academic Recognition Information (NARIC)  Centres  and the Quality Assurance Agencies from WB6.