Albania and Moldova signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the Education Reform Initiative of South Eastern Europe during the Stability Pact Regional Table Meeting and in the presence of the Special Co-ordinator Erhard Busek.  The Memorandum signed today by Albanian Minister of Education, Luan Memushi, and by Moldovan Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vitalie Slonovschi, reaffirms the joint interest of SEE countries to be included into the wider European Area of Education. 

Background: The original Memorandum to this end was signed at the EU Education Ministers Conference, on 28 June in Nicosia (Cyprus), in the presence of the Greek EU-Presidency and the Stability Pact.  The EU has given itself the ambitious target to modernize the education systems of its member states increase competitiveness and enhance employability, by 2010.  These improvements, known as the Lisbon Process, should bear equally promising fruits in Southeast Europe through the SEE Education Reform Initiative, launched under the auspices of the Stability Pact Task Force Education and Youth and signed in Nicosia earlier this year.  Its aim is to extend the benefits of common European standards in education to SEE serving as an interface between ongoing SEE education reform at national level and European trends in order to achieve common European standards in education.  It supports SEE countries in the transition period and helps them improve the achievements attained so far in their integration into the European mainstream.

As part of an Action Plan for implementing the Education Reform Initiative, ministries from the region have identified 9 priority areas for education development and reform.   These priorities are fully in line with the three strategic goals of the European Commission for the "Detailed Work Programme on the Follow-up of the Objectives of Education and Training Systems in Europe".  Similar to the EU country's open method of co-ordination, all participating SEE countries will develop relevant indicators and benchmarks, in order to be able to monitor and assess progress on the reforms being made.  This initiative is designed to be flexible vis-à-vis respecting the individual path for implementing the necessary reforms of the participating countries.  The target date, however, is the year 2010, when both the objectives of the EU Detailed Work Programme and the SEE Education Reform Initiative should be achieved by each signatory.