On the 10th April 2019 there was a meeting organised by the Delegation of European Union in BiH Deputy Head of the EU Mission, Khaldoun Sinno, attended by director of the Higher Accreditation Agency of Republic of Srpska Biljana Vojvodic, PhD and director of the Agency for Development of Higher Education and Quality Assurance Enver Halilovic. It was reaffirmed at the meeting that there is no progress in agreeing on enlisting accredited institutions from the Republic of Srpska into the Register at the BiH level.
During this meeting, it was stated that there were no significant obstacles in meeting the requirements of the criteria and standards by the higher education institutions from Republic of Srpska. Therefore, Mrs. Vojvodic emphasized that these were artificially constructed bureaucratic obstacles created by the breach of the Framework Law on Higher Education by Director Halilovic, and once again called on the Delegation of the European Union to consider registers of institutions maintained at the Republic of Srpska level as a referential data source in this situation since they are competent educational authorities, as well as the Center for Recognition of Qualifications n Higher Education at the BiH level, which represents the ENIC / NARIC Center of BiH.
She pointed out that this was also in line with the spirit of the Lisbon Convention, which stipulates that in the cases of recognition of the higher education system, the party, in this case tens of thousands of students of the Republic of Srpska universities, as well as the academic community and higher education institutions themselves, should always benefit.
Vojvodic reminded that BiH is a country with a complex administrative structure, and that good European practices to be taken into account are those of countries where there is a number of higher quality assurance agencies such as Belgium, Germany, Spain, Netherlands etc.
This is even more important because it is evident that rejection to enlist higher education institutions from Republic of Srpska into the Register of Accredited Institutions at BiH level is not an attitude of the Agency for Development of Higher Education and Quality Assurance as an institution, but solely of one person, the Director of the Agency who made this decision without the consent of his deputies, thus directly breaching the Statute of this Agency.
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