The Joint European Degree Label – The right mix in one glass

Imagine the great lounge of a grand hotel in a bustling European city. A wonderful party is taking place, with an orchestra playing live music. Guests are dancing or chatting at their tables, while enjoying fresh beers, fine wines, strong spirits and delicious non-alcoholic beverages. Behind the bar the tender prepares the most wonderful cocktails. It is the maître d’hôtel himself, in his white tuxedo, who comes to serve them to the tables. Alas, there is one spoiling issue, bothering guests and staff alike: the cocktails are to be served in multiple glasses – one per ingredient.

A similar situation has long persisted concerning the diplomas awarded to students graduating from transnational joint study programmes. What should be presented as the outcome of a single, integrated experience is instead fragmented at the climactic moment. Often the integrated nature of the joint study programme – in which elements such as design, governance, admission, monitoring, evaluation, degree awarding, quality assurance, etc. are all considered jointly – gets entirely lost when the students graduate. Indeed, depending on the countries and/or institutions where students study and their respective regulatory or administrative context, students may receive a wide range of diploma combinations. These include double degrees, multiple degrees or joint degrees combined with national diplomas for some institutions. It is not helpful to transparency and does injustice to the earnest efforts for integration at all earlier stages in offering said programmes.

Towards a common solution

However, this Spring 2026, the foundations are being finalised to alleviate this situation, for we are moving closer to the launching of the first Joint European Degree Label procedures. The Joint European Degree Label, conceived as a ‘hallmark of jointness’, will be awarded by quality assurance agencies to joint programmes at Bachelor's, Master's or PhD level that meet a set of criteria commonly agreed at European level and that demonstrate clear European added value. To avoid multiple procedures, where relevant it will be possible to connect the labelling to the procedure for obtaining accreditation through the European Approach for the Quality Assurance of Joint programmes.

The criteria for the Joint European Degree Label were adopted by the EU member states in May 2025. They were the culmination of a process that started about five years before, when the European Commission launched a vision for the establishment of a European Degree. With the EU having limited competencies in education policy matter, this can only consist of a voluntary process of alignment between the member states. In this process, the higher education sector itself was closely involved, along with student representative organisations, which is testimony to the European values which the label itself is to promote.

Joint programmes form an important instrument within the overall internationalisation toolbox at the disposal of higher education institutions. They can be very rewarding endeavours for students and academics involved, while also offering higher education institutions opportunities for updating or expanding their educational offer. The latter is more pressing than ever, with our continent and the globe now facing geopolitical, demographic, ecological and technological challenges of an unprecedented scale, unimaginable at the end of the previous century, when the Bologna process was launched.

Addressing persistent issues

Joint programmes – and with them joint degrees – were promoted from the very start of the Erasmus Mundus programme over 20 years ago as a testbed for Bologna developments. The recent upscaling brought by the European University Alliances has created new momentum for the realisation of earlier ambitions: to align degree structures, expand the joint study programme offer throughout Europe and remain attractive as study destination for students from across the globe, thereby providing a collective answer to our common challenges.

However, awkward degree construction is only one of several administrative complexities still faced by academics and administrators during the development and implementation of joint programmes. The Joint European Degree Label aims to bring solace, as many of these complexities originate from the different regulatory or administrative contexts of the respective higher education institutions involved.

Even the mere basic terminology can still form an obstacle when designing joint programmes: what makes a joint study programme joint? What is a joint degree? How do we distinguish discussions about the ‘carrier’ of the degree from talks over its ‘title’?  Now, with the Joint European Degree Label, finally a commonly defined ‘level playing field’ is being created.

One of the Joint European Degree Label’s criteria stipulates that the degree awarded must be a joint degree awarded by all higher education institutions involved. Therefore, if a joint study programme wants to receive the label, it will need to deliver a joint degree. If the local context of one or more of the partners does not allow for this, this will need adapting, or the study programme will not be able to receive the label, no matter how well it is aligned with the other criteria. The same logic is to apply to possible hurdles that relate to the other criteria. In other words, the Joint European Degree Label is designed to give member states and higher education institutions a clear incentive to remove remaining obstacles and to integrate existing Bologna instruments more coherently.

Moving towards implementation

What is next? As mentioned, guiding documentation is now nearing adoption. It will provide much-needed procedural detail to the criteria as approved in May 2025. With this framework in place, from the second half of this year onward, we may expect quality assurance agencies to start offering the labelling process, while joint programme coordinators will commence investigating which agency to approach for their programme.

While there is no direct financial return from receiving the label  – the labelling itself will come at a price –, it will offer to the institutions and staff involved a recognition of their transnational efforts of integration, and constitute an attraction pole for students, especially if accompanied with transnational promotion efforts. For students with an interest in participating in a joint programme, the label will provide clarity on what to expect.

But the Joint European Degree Label is not where this endeavour ends. Under impulse of the European Commission, in May 2025 the member states of the EU also agreed they will look back by 2030 and see where the label will have brought them in creating a level playing field, and whether there is readiness, a need, and willingness to go one more step: the creation of a joint European Degree, possibly through a unification of title and diploma models.

Serving the final mix

For more than 20 years the EU is supporting joint master programmes under the Erasmus Mundus Action, and in more recent years the European University Alliances have joined in as champions of joint education. Joint study programmes will not replace other forms of internationalisation that may reach larger numbers of students, but they offer something distinct: joint programmes bring qualitative, consolidated cooperation in higher education. Their regulatory facilitation may act as a trailblazer for other forms of international cooperation and policy alignment. The true party resides in our respective national or regional systems coming closer; the beauty of it resides in the voluntary character of the process.

Now may the guests enjoy their expertly mixed drinks in a proper way and the dishwashers be saved from overflowing with surplus glasses!