The first application round of 2010 resulted in the acceptance of two quality assurance agencies on the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education. The decision was taken by the Register Committee at its meeting in Dublin on 15 May.

The Register Committee concluded that AQAS and evalag successfully evidenced their substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) through an independent external review. With these two admissions EQAR now lists nineteen agencies that are active in the European Higher Education Area.

Read more in Press Release.

The next meeting of the Register Committee will take place in early November 2010. Quality assurance agencies wishing to apply for inclusion in the Register must submit their applications by 31 August 2010.

As European ministers of higher education meet in Budapest and Vienna (on 11 and 12 March 2010) to mark the anniversary of the Bologna Process, the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) publishes its Annual Report 2009. The report summarises EQAR's activities in its second year of existence.

Fourteen European quality assurance agencies were admitted to the Register in 2009 after having evidenced their substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG), leading to seventeen agencies registered on EQAR in total. In October 2009, EQAR published a first comprehensive report of its Register Committee, which is included in the Annual Report 2009 and gives a detailed account of the decision-making on applications for inclusion on the Register and key observations from the Committee's deliberations.

EQAR was founded in 2008 by the E4 Group, comprising of the European representative bodies of higher education institutions, students and quality assurance agencies, on the basis of a mandate received from European ministers of higher education at the Bologna follow-up conference in London in 2007.

Printed copies are available at the conference in Budapest and Vienna and will be posted to EQAR members and partners.