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Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister, last week urged the creation of “a university without walls” in Europe, similar to that which allowed the free flow of intellectuals in Europe during the Renaissance.

Jospin was speaking at the end of a two-day colloquium held at the Sorbonne in Paris, marking the 800th anniversary of the founding of the University of Paris — though the date is contested by some. He said the goal should be “for a student to be able to start his studies in Paris, and follow them at Heidelberg, Oxford or Bologna”. He added: “If the rules get in the way of that mobility, then we need to change the rules.”

At the end of the meeting, education ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy signed a declaration committing themselves to building a common European university system. This would include harmonizing course structures and encouraging greater mobility of students and staff among European countries.

Jospin, himself a former minister of education, said that a new political impetus was needed. He endorsed the declaration's statement that “Europe is not only that of the Euro, of the banks and the economy; it must be a Europe of knowledge as well”.

The four ministers — Claude Allègre (France), Tessa Blackstone (United Kingdom), Jürgen Rüttgers (Germany) and Luigi Berlinguer (Italy) — committed themselves at the meeting to harmonizing their university degree systems. They agreed that this should cover a first degree, a short masters and a longer doctorate degree, including a system for transferring credits obtained for modules and semesters in various European institutions.

This year, around 200,000 students and 31,000 lecturers will take part in the European Commission's exchange schemes such as Socrates and Leonardo. But this is a fraction of the continent's 11 million students.

Discouraging factors include excessive bureaucracy and the relatively low value of grants within the schemes compared with the costs of living abroad. But the lack of mutual recognition of course credits is generally seen as an even larger obstacle.

The ministers backed credit transfer schemes, such as the commission's recently launched European Credit Transfer System, to which around 1,300 universities have signed up.

But the consensus at the meeting was that a new political effort was needed, in particular to take advantage of the opportunities offered by new technologies such as videoconferencing.