Κατά την επίσημη τελετή έναρξης της 33ης Ετήσιας Συνάντησης των Δικτύων ENIC-NARIC, που πραγματοποιήθηκε στο Μουσείο Ακρόπολης, ο Πρόεδρος του Δ.Σ. του ΔΟΑΤΑΠ, Καθηγητής Ορέστης Καλογήρου, παρουσίασε την πορεία της ακαδημαϊκής αναγνώρισης στην Ελλάδα από την ίδρυση του ΔΙΚΑΤΣΑ έως τις σύγχρονες μεταρρυθμίσεις του ΔΟΑΤΑΠ, τοποθετώντας την ελληνική εμπειρία στο ευρύτερο ευρωπαϊκό πλαίσιο της αναγνώρισης προσόντων και της διεθνούς ακαδημαϊκής συνεργασίας. Παράλληλα, αναφέρθηκε στις πρωτοβουλίες ψηφιακού μετασχηματισμού του Οργανισμού, στις προκλήσεις της διεθνοποίησης της ανώτατης εκπαίδευσης και στη σημασία της δίκαιης, διαφανούς και αξιόπιστης ακαδημαϊκής αναγνώρισης ως δημόσιου αγαθού και θεμελιώδους δικαιώματος στην εκπαίδευση, επισημαίνοντας χαρακτηριστικά ότι:
«Η ακαδημαϊκή αναγνώριση αποτελεί δικαίωμα και δημόσιο αγαθό στην εκπαίδευση, που επιτρέπει σε εκατομμύρια νέους να συνεχίζουν τις σπουδές τους διασυνοριακά. Τα κέντρα ENIC-NARIC παραμένουμε προσηλωμένα στην παροχή δίκαιης, διαφανούς, αξιόπιστης και ταχείας αναγνώρισης. Αυτή είναι η κοινή μας αποστολή.»
Ακολουθεί το πλήρες κείμενο της ομιλίας:
Dear Minister of Education,
Deputy Minister of Education,
Secretary General for Higher Education,
Members of the EB/NAB members and Co-secretariats’ representatives,
Dear Colleagues,
Dear Guests,
Ladies & Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me, as Board President of DOATAP, the Hellenic ENIC-NARIC, to welcome you to the 33rd Annual Joint Meeting of the ENIC and NARIC Networks, here in Athens, at one of the city’s most emblematic landmarks, both modern and classic, the Acropolis Museum.
In the world of Classical Greece, the “recognition of academic qualifications” — if we may allow ourselves a historical anachronism necessary to understand its modern meaning — did not require institutional frameworks, legislation, or international conventions. And yet, perhaps the first prerequisite for academic recognition ever formulated in history was the inscription displayed outside Plato’s Academy, located walking distance from here: «Μηδείς αγεωμέτρητος εισήτω», “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.” No geometry, no admission!
Today, however, we live in a different world. A world shaped by international mobility and the movement of students across borders, where academic recognition has become an essential institutional necessity. According to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the number of internationally mobile students has increased from approximately two million in 2000 to more than six million today, while estimates by the OECD suggest that this trend will continue, approaching eight million within the next decade.
Allow me, therefore, to briefly reflect on the history of academic recognition in Greece.
Until 1977, responsibility for the recognition of foreign qualifications in Greece belonged to the Professors’ Associations of the respective faculties of the country’s six universities — today there are thirty — without common rules or unified procedures.
In 1977, the Inter-University Center for the Recognition of Foreign Higher Education Qualifications, DIKATSA, was established as the exclusively competent national authority for the recognition of foreign academic qualifications. Its establishment marked an important step in the modernization of Greek public administration and a genuine reformist breakthrough.
With the establishment of DIKATSA, Greece joined the first European wave of creating central, institutionalized bodies for academic recognition, long before the terms ENIC or NARIC had entered our common vocabulary.
In 2005, DIKATSA was renamed Hellenic National Academic Recognition and Information Center, DOATAP, while certain aspects of the legal framework governing academic recognition were revised. In 2022, a major reform essentially transformed the landscape of academic recognition in Greece.
In 2027, Greece will complete fifty years of institutionalized academic recognition since the establishment of DIKATSA, and we are already preparing to mark this anniversary appropriately.
As you know, the NARIC network was established in 1984, with the European Commission serving as its secretariat. Although Greece was not among the six founding countries — Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg — it joined the first enlargement group immediately afterwards, already in 1984, together with the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark. The ENIC network was established later in 1994, with the Council of Europe and UNESCO acting as co-secretariats. Subsequently, the two networks became operationally integrated.
From Budapest in 1994, where the first Joint Meeting of the ENIC-NARIC networks took place, to Athens in 2026, hosting the 33rd meeting, European cooperation in the recognition of qualifications has travelled an impressive path of institutional maturity, cooperation, and mutual trust.
An important milestone for DOATAP was Greece’s active participation in the establishment of the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees (EQPR) in 2017, within the framework of cooperation among the ENIC-NARIC centres and under the auspices of the Council of Europe. Greece was among the countries that played a pioneering role in shaping and piloting the EQPR, and DOATAP has played — and continues to play — an active role in its implementation.
Although Greece had already implemented most of the requirements of the Lisbon Recognition Convention through the establishment of DIKATSA in 1977 and DOATAP later, and although Greece was a founding member of both the Bologna Process and the EHEA since 1999, the country ratified the Convention only in 2024, twenty-five years after its entry into force.
What ultimately made this possible was the 2022 reform of the legal framework for academic recognition, which fully aligned Greece with the requirements of LRC. At the same time, that decision reflects the broader policy of internationalization and outward orientation adopted by the Greek government for Greek universities during the past several years, as the Minister of Education described earlier.
There is, however, another important Greek characteristic that strongly affects academic recognition in our country: the thousands of Greeks who have studied — and continue to study — abroad since the early 1970s.
Today, DOATAP receives approximately 10,000 applications annually. 98% of them concern Greeks who studied abroad and wish to return and integrate into the labour market or the academic system of the country.
This reality has made academic recognition in Greece not simply an administrative procedure, but an issue closely connected with educational mobility, social mobility, and the country’s relationship with its academic diaspora.
Despite the delayed ratification of LRC, Greece lost no further time. For the past few months, it has been part of the group of twenty countries participating in the Intergovernmental Drafting Group for the future Council of Europe Convention on the Conditions of Transparency and Quality Assurance for Automatic Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications in Europe. I personally have the honour of representing Greece in this committee.
I hope, however, that Greece will not need another twenty-five years to ratify the Global and the AR conventions.
Through the 2022 reform, Greece implemented the 2018 Recommendation of the European Commission on automatic recognition, effectively eliminating separate recognition procedures across a broad range of academic processes. This concerns not only access to further studies, but also appointments to academic and research positions, employment in research programmes, and several other academic activities.
At DOATAP, alongside fair recognition, we attach equal importance to quick recognition.
Thus, in addition, the reform explicitly introduced the concept of substantial differences, making compensatory measures more balanced and fair, while significantly reducing bureaucracy, simplifying procedures, and accelerating the overall processing time.
Today, following the 2022 reform, application processing times range from one to eight weeks, depending on the complexity of each case.
We have also placed particular emphasis on digital governance.
Since 2019, the submission, processing, and completion of applications have been entirely paperless, as have internal administration procedures, document circulation, human resources management, and financial administration.
One of the most ambitious projects we undertook in recent years was the digitization of 200,000 paper files processed between 1980 and 2019 — amounting to six million pages — together with their integration, alongside 50,000 digital files created since 2019, into the interoperability framework of the gov.gr portal.
As a result, 250,000 holders of positive recognition decisions are now able to issue digitally authenticated certificates with a unique verification code and advanced electronic seal (QR), ensuring authenticity for universities, employers, and public authorities.
Among our immediate priorities are the integration of advanced Artificial Intelligence systems into credential evaluation, as well as the development of interoperability with foreign universities for the automatic transmission of awards and transcripts — beginning with Cyprus — and with Greek universities for the management of compensatory measures.
At the same time, we are promoting the idea of building a unified European digital recognition ecosystem based on interoperability, authenticity, and cross-border trust, which is also the title of the workshop we will be co-chairing tomorrow.
Dear colleagues, as we all know, academic recognition is a constantly evolving field that requires continuous vigilance and adaptation to the global transformation of higher education.
We strongly believe that academic recognition is a right — a public good in education — enabling millions of young people around the world to continue their studies across borders.
And we, the ENIC-NARIC centres gathered here today, remain committed to providing fair, transparent, reliable, and swift recognition.
This is our shared mission, and this is what will bring us together over the next two days.
At this point, I would like to sincerely thank the EB/NAB Bureau and the Co-secretariats for the trust placed in DOATAP in entrusting us with the organisation of this meeting, and for the excellent cooperation throughout its preparation. I would also like to extend our gratitude to the European Commission for its financial support.
On behalf of all the staff of DOATAP, who have worked hard to prepare this meeting, I warmly welcome you to Athens and sincerely hope that this meeting will meet your expectations, both as a high-level professional event and as an enjoyable experience.
Thank you very much for your attention.