European Higher Education Area

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is a group of 48 countries cooperating to achieve comparable and compatible higher education systems throughout Europe. The EHEA was launched in March 2010 during the Budapest-Vienna Ministerial Conference on the 10th anniversary of the Bologna Process. The main objective of the Bologna Process since its inception in 1999 was to ensure more comparable, compatible, and coherent higher education systems in Europe. The EHEA was meant to be the result of all the efforts of the Bologna Process members between 1999 and 2010, which became a reality with the Budapest-Vienna Declaration of March 2010.

To join the EHEA, a country must sign and ratify the European Cultural Convention treaty. The countries of the EHEA follow the directives of the Bologna Process to achieve comparable and compatible higher education systems throughout Europe<. As part of the Bologna Process, countries within the EHEA have implemented systems with three cycles of higher education qualifications. Another vital cornerstone for comparability within the EHEA was the introduction of ECTS credit points (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System)[2]. By this standard, one year of full-time academic study corresponds to 60 ECTS points. These are commonly split down per lecture, facilitating student mobility between EHEA countries.

The EHEA has several working groups and task forces focusing on different aspects of higher education and research. These include the Working Group on Fundamental Values, Working Group on Social Dimension, Task Force on the Review of the Rules and Regulations for the Governance of the European Higher Education Area, Ad Hoc Task Force to Increase Synergies Between the EHEA, the Higher Education Dimension of the EEA and the ERA, Task Force on Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the EHEA community, Working Group on Learning & Teaching, Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue, and EHEA Network