Due in part to advocacy by ACA, Europe’s Ministers of Education launched in 2005 the ‘external dimension’ of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Since its inception in 2006, an ‘official Bologna working group’ has elaborated an external Bologna strategy, identified key activity areas and, more recently, helped devise the Bologna Policy Forum, where EU Ministers meet their counterparts from all over the world.

This year, the third-generation working group has taken up its work, now under the name of ‘global openness’. One of its tasks is to set up a network of national representatives from the EHEA to prepare joint action for the promotion of European higher education worldwide and the presentation of information on the Bologna Process elsewhere in the world. At a meeting in Vienna at the end of May, this ‘Information and Promotion network’ took up its work. Its three chairpersons are Hubert Duerrstein, the CEO of the Austrian Exchange Service, as well as Magalie Soenen and Heli Aru, of the Flemish and Estonian ministries of education, respectively. ACA hopes the network will lead to a joint effort to market European higher education globally.