A New Vision for European Cooperation

The aim of this Training and Cooperation Activity was to explore potential opportunities for cooperation in higher education in Southeast Europe and to address the challenges involved in this field and the development opportunities in this area for the region.

The Brexit scenario, the war in Ukraine as well as recent developments in internationalization in several countries have shown that the perception of mutual exchange and mobility as well as joint project cooperation within Europe is currently undergoing substantial changes. Long-standing cooperation partners and traditional mobility flows have to be complemented by new partners and a new vision of European Cooperation.

A great potential for this lies in the cooperation with Southeast European partners. In terms of exploring new concepts of mobility cooperation, not only in- and outbound flows are considered, but also intra-regional flows as well as blended mobility formats.

By Identifying new ways and types of cooperation with Southeast European countries, we also tackle the linguistic, socioeconomic and political difficulties that have hindered progress in promoting intra-regional cooperation and created obstacles for Southeast European students to go abroad. Considering already existing partnerships between SEE countries in the field of higher education (mobility and project cooperation), we make use of synergies and pre-existing knowledge in this field.

The TCA in Regensburg provided an excellent opportunity to discuss these issues with higher education stakeholders from Southeast Europe, Germany and other participating countries. The workshop sessions showed how project coordinators and applicants can get started and successfully manage cooperation projects in the Erasmus+ Program as well as possibilities to increase individual mobility to the region and the potentials and hurdles involved.

Several universities, National Agencies, National Erasmus+ Offices, among other actors, have contributed to understand the context of international cooperation and the mobilities program in the region and how we can move forward. The networking sessions provided a platform for building potential partnerships among institutions that have similar interest or/and have complementary capabilities.

Here is some feedback from the participants who participated in our Training and Cooperation Activity “A New Vision for European Cooperation” in Regensburg:

The event was highly interesting for me and I could establish many new contacts. We were delighted that it took place here in Regensburg. Nikolas Djukić
Executive Director for the Bavarian Academic Center for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe

We are currently scheduling a visit to Albania from which we hope to obtain the necessary results for a Cooperation Partnership. Regensburg is already bearing fruitSamuel Coronado Alvarez
International Project Manager for the University of Bielefeld

As national Agency representative I would like to thank you for the organization and realization of the TCA event (it was unique opportunity in terms of strengthening collaboration between HEIs).

The event was very much useful for us as NA representatives and much more useful for HEIs representatives, the feedback from the colleagues from the universities was very positive and they are already in collaboration and communication with other colleagues that have attended at the event.

Several bilateral and inter-institutional agreements already have been conducted in terms of the individual mobilities in KA1 (KA131 and KA171) and also ideas have been raised in terms of cooperation partnerships and centralized actions as well.M.Sc. Aleksandar Bogojevski Head of Unit for mobility in higher education, adult education and youth - NEO Nord Macedonia

Contact in terms of content

Michaela Lanaro

E-Mail

Contact in terms of organisation

Katrin Arnold

TCA