(fra kommisjonsrekommandasjonen)

1. Quality assurance systems are instrumental in establishing high quality standards for education and building trust among higher education systems and institutions across the European Education Area and beyond. They constitute a key building block of transnational cooperation. Ensuring quality of higher education is the foundation for mutual trust, which enables transnational cooperation and seamless learning mobility.

2. The main responsibility for the quality of their educational provision lies with higher education institutions, which should make the attainment of the highest standards a key institutional priority and develop quality assurance strategies and processes to ensure the achievement of that objective.

3. The implementation of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) has been a fundamental step in the consolidation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), supporting the creation of a quality culture in higher education systems and institutions across Europe; however, the ESG have not yet been fully implemented in all Member States.

4. Societies across Europe are experiencing dynamic transformation, driven by the green and digital transitions, opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence, demographic challenges and a rapidly changing geopolitical situation. Higher education systems should not only react, but actively contribute to and drive this transformation. Quality assurance processes should, when relevant, support higher education institutions in this transformational journey by providing expert reviews to enhance the quality of their educational offer.

5. The need to make quality assurance processes more agile, internationalised and fit for purpose should be tackled while ensuring that these processes remain focused on ensuring the highest quality standards. Obtaining feedback from graduates on their learning and career pathways and the relevance of the education, skills and competences acquired constitutes a valuable monitoring tool, which can be used to ensure quality and relevance at institutional and system level. The European Graduate Tracking Initiative (1) has contributed to making such tracking more systematic and comparable.

6. Diverging national quality assurance arrangements still create complexity for transnational cooperation in higher education, hampering the development of joint educational programmes and limiting educational opportunities for higher education institutions and students. It is important that demonstrating compliance with formal requirements is balanced with ensuring an ongoing emphasis on and commitment to continuous improvement in education provision, which is central to quality assurance.

7. Existing instruments, such as the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes (European Approach) (2), are highly valued by the higher education community and Member States, but implementation remains scarce due to divergent national approaches.

8. Joint programmes have become a hallmark of the European Education Area and are highly valued by all higher education stakeholders. Adequate quality assurance arrangements are a pre-requisite for ensuring these joint programmes can be widely implemented across the Union. Awarding a joint European degree label on the basis of predefined criteria could help tackle existing issues related to quality assurance and accreditation of joint programmes. Further momentum for making it easier for higher education institutions engaged in transnational cooperation to provide joint programmes and award joint degrees, in accordance with the Bologna instruments, could be provided by a joint European degree at a later stage.

9. While discussions on the joint European degree are ongoing, a decision on its possible introduction has not yet been taken by the Council of the European Union and any reference to a joint European degree in this Council Recommendation should be understood in this sense. Clear and detailed information will be needed for the Council to make an evidence-informed decision on the next steps towards the joint European degree.

10. The European criteria in Annex II set out the key features of the joint European degree label and guarantee the respect of the highest standards to offer transnational programmes and showcase the specific European nature of such a label. These criteria are neither mandatory nor legally binding, but to ensure mutual trust, the joint European degree label is only awarded when all these criteria are met.

11. The set of European criteria for the joint European degree label may represent a basis for those to be applied to the joint European degree at a later stage if, further to its analysis of the Commission’s evaluation report on the implementation of the joint European degree label and the feasibility study on a joint European degree as described in the Council Resolution on a joint European degree label and the next steps towards a possible joint European degree: boosting Europe’s competitiveness and the attractiveness of European higher education, the Council decides to take steps towards the introduction of a joint European degree. The feasibility study should include a thorough evaluation of the European criteria on the basis of which the joint European degree would be awarded and the corresponding quality assurance procedures as a basis for the Council decision on the criteria of the possible joint European degree.

12. In accordance with the Council Recommendation on building bridges for effective European higher education cooperation (3), several Member States encourage the use of the European Approach and are gradually moving towards more institutional external quality assurance systems and by doing so, making transnational higher education cooperation more effective and flexible. Reinforcing internal quality assurance systems is an important step towards speeding up processes while ensuring the highest quality standards.

13. Alliances of higher education institutions, such as European Universities alliances, are at the forefront of transnational cooperation. Council conclusions on the European Universities initiative – Bridging higher education, research, innovation and society: Paving the way for a new dimension in European higher education (4) state that ‘European Universities’ aim to contribute to the quality of transnational cooperation through interinstitutional strategies that combine learning and teaching, research, innovation and knowledge transfer into the economy and society, and contribute to policy and societal change. They are also important platforms for further developing the research and innovation dimensions within higher education institutions that need to pursue research-based learning, as well as long-term flexible and attractive research and teaching careers. These alliances commit to taking their cooperation to the next level by setting up European inter-university campuses where joint educational provision is the norm. As a key step in the creation of these campuses, alliances are building internal quality assurance systems that ensure that the quality of their joint educational provision meets the highest standards. Doing so will provide assurance to their stakeholders and will facilitate the joint provision of education. Key building blocks have been identified to start the exploration of a dedicated quality assurance framework and assess its use.

14. Automatic mutual recognition of qualifications and learning periods abroad is necessary to make learning mobility a reality for all, to support balanced brain circulation among all Member States, and to foster competitiveness. In the 2018 Council Recommendation on automatic mutual recognition of higher education and upper secondary qualifications and the outcomes of learning periods abroad (5), Member States were recommended to put in place the steps necessary to achieve automatic mutual recognition for the purpose of further learning without having to go through a separate recognition procedure, so that a higher education qualification acquired in one Member State is automatically recognised at the same level, for the purpose of accessing further studies, in the others, without prejudicing a higher education institution’s or the competent authorities’ right to set specific admission criteria for specific programmes or to check the authenticity of documents. Robust quality assurance systems are the foundation for building the necessary trust to ensure automatic recognition.

15. This Recommendation fully respects the principles of subsidiarity, institutional autonomy and academic freedom, and will be implemented in accordance with national circumstances and in cooperation with Member States and all relevant stakeholders.