What is the Bologna Process?

In June 1999, higher education ministers from twenty-nine European countries, including Slovenia, gathered in Bologna to sign the Bologna Declaration outlining the course of development in the European higher education system until 2010. With this Declaration, the signatories set a common goal – to collaborate, with full consideration and respect for the diversity of the national systems of education and university autonomy, on building an open and competitive European higher education area by 2010 that will enable the free movement and employment of European students and graduates and also be attractive to non-European students. This goal was to be achieved through various measures, such as the introduction of comparable and transparent higher education structures and levels, the mutual recognition of relevant and comparable higher education qualifications, the introduction of mutually recognized credit systems and quality assurance systems, promoting the mobility of students and higher education teachers, the development of an European dimension in education and the increased competitiveness of European higher education in the world.

Since the Bologna Declaration, relevant ministers from the signatory countries have met every two years (Prague, 2001; Berlin, 2003; Bergen, 2005; London, 2007) to assess the progress made in the individual countries and to agree on the future course of process development and the action necessary to fulfil the goals of the Bologna Declaration.

For this purpose, a special communiqué is adopted at every conference by the ministers, containing proposals for the future course of the Bologna Process development. Since 1999, as many as forty-five countries have joined the process.