What did the Bologna Declaration actually say?

The short answer

On 19 June 1999, in Bologna, ministers responsible for higher education in 29 European countries signed a joint declaration. They agreed to build a “European area of higher education” and set six aims to reach “within the first decade of the third millennium”: degrees that are easy to read and compare, two main cycles of study, a system of credits, more mobility, co-operation in quality assurance, and a European dimension in higher education.

Sources: [1]

What kind of document it is

The declaration is not a treaty and not a law of the European Union. It is a joint commitment by ministers, who said they would pursue its aims through “intergovernmental co-operation”. The European Higher Education Area describes the process as voluntary harmonisation, “not as clauses of a binding contract”.

It built on the Sorbonne Declaration, signed a year earlier, on 25 May 1998, by the ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Sources: [1] [2] [3]

The six aims in plain language

1. Degrees that are easy to read and compare – also through the Diploma Supplement, a standard description attached to a diploma. The goal: a degree from one country should be understandable in another, for employers as much as for universities. More on the page Diploma Supplement.
2. Two main cycles, undergraduate and graduate. The first cycle lasts at least three years and should itself be useful on the labour market; the second leads to a master's and/or a doctorate. See Three cycles.
3. A system of credits, “such as in the ECTS system”, as a way of making student mobility easier. Credits could also be earned outside higher education, including in lifelong learning, if the receiving university recognises them. See ECTS credits.
4. Mobility: removing obstacles to free movement – for students, access to study and training and related services; for teachers, researchers and administrative staff, recognition of time spent working in another European country.
5. Co-operation in quality assurance, so that countries develop comparable criteria and methods for checking the quality of studies. See Quality assurance.
6. A European dimension in higher education: in curricula, in co-operation between institutions, in mobility schemes and in integrated programmes of study, training and research.

Sources: [1]

What it did not say

The declaration did not ask for one European university system. The ministers wrote that they would act with “full respect of the diversity of cultures, languages, national education systems and of University autonomy”. Countries kept their own laws and their own names for degrees; what was to become common was the architecture – cycles, credits, a shared way of describing qualifications.

Nor did it mention a third, doctoral cycle as a separate level. The doctorate appears only as a possible outcome of the second cycle. It became the third cycle in Berlin in 2003.

Sources: [1] [5]

What happened next

The ministers agreed to meet again within two years to check progress. They did – in Prague in 2001 – and have kept meeting every two to three years since. In 2010 the European Higher Education Area was officially launched. The whole sequence, year by year, is on the page Milestones.

Sources: [1] [4] [6]

Sources

1. The Bologna Declaration (1999)
2. EHEA – Bologna, 18–19 June 1999
3. Sorbonne Joint Declaration (1998)
4. Prague Communiqué (2001)
5. Berlin Communiqué (2003)
6. Budapest-Vienna Declaration (2010)

Sources checked on 26 October 2026. Official documents are linked, not republished.