Berlin Communiqué
Overview: The European Higher Education Ministers met in Berlin on September 18 and 19. They discussed the progress made since the Prague 2001 meeting and set their course for the next year and a half, when they would meet again in May 2005 in Bergen, Norway.
Signatories: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Holy See, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia were admitted as new members, bringing the emerging European Higher Education to a total of forty countries.
Mission, Goals, and Achievements: The Berlin Communiqué, a major outcome of this meeting, emphasized the importance of all the elements of the Bologna Process for establishing the European Higher Education Area and stressed the need to intensify the member countries' efforts at the institutional, national, and European level. They committed themselves to several important priorities: strengthening their efforts to promote effective quality assurance systems, intensifying the effective use of the system based on two cycles, and improving the mutual recognition of degrees and study periods. They called for detailed progress reports by 2005 from all participating countries.
