Benelux, Baltic countries to recognize each other's higher education degrees

TALLINN - On Wednesday, an agreement on the automatic recognition of higher education degrees between the Benelux and the Baltic states came into effect.

The Dutch parliament was the last of the six national parliaments to approve the agreement, which facilitates academic mobility between Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and promotes cooperation between universities in research and teaching activities, as well as students' entry into the job market.

"One of the key objectives of the European Higher Education Area is the transition to automatic recognition of higher education qualifications, which means that diplomas and degrees would be recognized without time-consuming assessment and comparison," Gunnar Vaht, the director of the Academic Recognition Information Center at the Estonian Education and Youth Board, said in a press release.

The automatic recognition agreement shows, above all, that the quality of national higher education systems and learning outcomes are reliable. The agreement also encourages cooperation between higher education institutions, for example, for the creation of joint curricula.  

The Benelux and the Baltic states have been among the most active advocates of automatic recognition. 

Other countries in the European region can also join the agreement concluded among the six nations.