Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.
2006 will be a decisive year for the implementation of the Bologna Accord. As commented in a previous post, the implementation of this accord is delegated mainly to the member states and the European institutions –the Parliament and the Commission- just play a subsidiary role. However, the Presidency of the European Union has the leading role and it may take the opportunity to boost the whole process. Is it reasonable to expect so?
As readers may know, ...
Tags(clickable): Bologna Accord, 2006, Education, European Union, EU Presidency
the Presidency of the European Union rotates every six months among the state members. On January 1st, 2006, the tenure of the Presidency will pass from the United Kingdom to Austria. In retrospective, the initiative of the British Presidency in the field of education has flattered to deceive. Indeed, many of us expected that, given the expertise of British institutions in the structure that has been adopted by the Bologna Accord – the two cycle structure of bachelor+master that is in fact the existing one in the UK - the whole process was going to be accelerated in the past semester. But the British Presidency has been busy with other matters, mainly with the aftermath of the failed European Constitution and the negotiations of the European Union Financial Perspectives for the period 2007 – 2013; definitely a major task.
Will Austria take the torch of the Bologna Accord during its EU Presidency tenure? I believe we can not expect much here. The Guardian publishes today that “Austria’s President Heinz Fischer admitted that many of his citizens are ‘fed up’ with the European Union, as the country prepares to take over the EU presidency from Britain on Sunday”. It should be noted that Austria tried unsuccessfully to prevent Turkey's membership talks two months ago. Certainly, it seems that the impulse that Austria will give to big European projects, including the Bologna Accord, will be less than strong.
However the second semester of 2006, when Finland takes the EU Presidency, is more grounds for optimism. Finland has been consistently considered as one of the countries with a better education system worldwide and it has been one of the pioneering countries in the implementation the Bologna Accord. In addition, a communiqué of Finland’s Government Communication Unit, outlining the priorities for Finland’s EU Presidency, raises many hopes: “The Finnish Presidency wants, in particular, to concentrate on promoting innovation policy, developing the internal market of services and providing better regulation. Finland also underlines social equality and sustainable development.”
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