On 7 February 2020, within the Croatia’s Presidency of the Council of the EU, a meeting of the Bologna Follow-up Group Board (BFUG) was held. Croatia co-chairs the BFUG with Ukraine. The six-month chairmanship includes a large number of activities, since a conference of ministers of higher education of the member States of the European Higher Education area will take place in Rome in June 2020.
At the Zagreb meeting, chairs of five working groups established after the Ministerial Conference held in Paris in 2018 submitted reports for the previous period: Bologna Implementation Coordination Group, Advisory Group on Social Dimension, Advisory Group on Learning and Teaching, Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue, as well as Working Group on Monitoring including the Task Force for future monitoring of values.
The Republic of Croatia co-chairs the Bologna Implementation Coordination Group, and the Social dimension Advisory Group. Detailed information on working groups is available on the web pages of the BFUG Secretariat: www.ehea.info.
The representative of the European Commission praised the efforts of countries participating in working groups on their work in the previous period and on improving the implementation of key commitments of the Bologna process at national level.
The reports also contain recommendations for a Draft Rome Communiqué to be adopted by the ministers in June 2020. The meeting of the Board for a Draft Rome Communiqué was held on 6 February 2020 at the Ministry of Science and Education. The Bologna Follow-up Group Board held a discussion on key open issues from the latest version of a Draft Roman Communiqué.
In the second part of the meeting, Italian BFUG Secretariat presented a draft agenda of the Conference of Ministers of Higher Education which will be held in Rome on June 24 and 25 2020. It is envisaged that each Minister outlines priorities of the Rome Communiqué presenting priorities at the national level in the medium term. The Draft agenda of the Global Policy Forum which takes place after a ministerial conference and involves macro-regions outside the European Higher Education area, was also discussed.
The meeting closed with the discussion on the application from the Republic of San Marino to join the European Higher Education Area and the draft agenda for the BFUG meeting to be held in Kiev, Ukraine, on March 4-5, under the co-chairmanship of Croatia and Ukraine.