On 17-19 June 2018, the 25th annual meeting of ENIC and NARIC networks was held at the Charles University in Prague. During the meeting, the issues on social responsibility of higher education institutions, implementation of Bologna Process, automatic academic recognition of qualifications and practices of evaluation of qualifications held by refugees were discussed.
At the special session on automatic academic recognition, Ms Aurelija Valeikienė, Deputy Director of the Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education (SKVC), presented the intergovernmental agreement on the automatic academic recognition of qualifications concerning higher education that was signed by the Ministers of Education of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on 8 June 2018 in Vilnius.
The provisions of this Agreement will be applied to automatic recognition of qualifications concerning higher education encompassing qualifications giving access to higher education and higher education qualifications, which belong to the current education systems of three Baltic States. According to the Agreement, a qualification concerning higher education awarded in one Baltic State will be automatically considered comparable to a qualification placed on the same level in the other contracting state, without any additional formalities.
Similar automatic recognition treaties are signed by Benelux countries, and among the Nordic countries (so-called Reykjavik declaration).
In addition to the legal treaties, other models of automatic recognition are applied in various European countries. For example, the Nordic-Baltic Manual is a transparency tool admissions officers within HEIs helping to speed up recognition of qualifications issued in this region.
The meeting in Prague was organised by the European Commission, the Council of Europe, UNESCO and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Czech ENIC-NARIC Centre).
