Bologna declaration

The Bologna Declaration is the joint declaration signed by the European ministers of education who met in Bologna on 19 June 1999, and it stands as the main guiding document of the Bologna process. Twenty-nine countries adopted it. It proposed a European Higher Education Area in which students and graduates could move freely between countries, with a qualification earned in one country accepted as an entry requirement for further study in another. Its stated aims included easily readable and comparable degrees and a system built on two main cycles, undergraduate and graduate, with a first cycle lasting at least three years. The Bergen meeting later refined this into three cycles, bachelor, master and doctorate. Later ministerial communiques from Prague, Berlin, Bergen, London and Leuven have followed it up.