"Teaching History: the path towards reconciliation in South-Eastern Europe", Brussels - 3 May 2007.    Under the framework of the core objective Fostering and Building Human Capital - WTI, the Stability Pact continues its active engagement in support of the promotion, translation and publishing of the Joint History Workbooks of the CDRSEE. After the publishing and distribution of the English, Serbian and Greek version of the workbooks, the Albanian version of the books is due to be published by mid 2007. The Stability Pact will continue to support the CDRSEE in its efforts to produce the language version of the books covering other SEE states. The Stability Pact is planning to organise a series of events dedicated to awareness raising about the need to fulfill one of its broader objectives - reform of history teaching in SEE. This effort builds upon the the Presidency conclusions of the European Council of 19 and 20 June 2003 endorsed the Council conclusion of 16 June on the Western Balkans including the "Thessaloniki Agenda for the Western Balkans: Moving Towards European Integration". The Thessaloniki Agenda unambiguously states, "[t]he EU also invites the countries of the region to take concrete initiatives with the objective of revising history textbooks." Furthermore, the Heads of State and Government of SEECP on their own behalf, recognized the need to engage in the modernisation of the history curricula and consequently in the final declaration of the sixth meeting of the SEECP held in Belgrade 9th April 2003 committed themselves to "put additional effort" in several fields crucial for the faster alignment of the region with the European standards and conditions, among which, "review of the history text books" is explicitly mentioned. Apart from its support to the CDRSEE, SP is seeking to include a wide number of actors to jointly engage in the initiative of history teaching reform in SEE. In this way, on 3 May 2007, in cooperation with the European Policy Center and King Baudouin Foundation in Brussels, the Stability Pact is organising a policy dialogue on the topic of "Teaching History: the path towards reconciliation in South-Eastern Europe".

[Link to Agenda]  [Link to MATRIX by SP/WTI]

Organisers: