The Estonian Higher Education Quality Agency (EKKA), in partnership with the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC), won the competition for a new Twinning project to further develop higher education in Azerbaijan

The Finnish-Estonian joint project competed with Lithuanian-Austrian, French-Spanish, and Greek project proposals and had a total procurement value of 1.3 million euros.  The overall objective of this Twinning project is to support the development of higher education in Azerbaijan in accordance with the principles of the European Higher Education Area.

The project was presented to an evaluation committee in Baku comprised of representatives of the Ministry of Education of the Azerbaijan Republic and the European Commission by Helka Kekäläinen (FINEEC), Project Leader from Finland, and Heli Mattisen (EKKA), Junior Project Leader from Estonia.

“The competition was fierce – three projects had fairly equal chances to win,” Heli Mattisen said after the announcement of the winner. “The advantage of the Finnish-Estonian joint project was probably our long-term cooperation in the field of quality evaluation in higher education and achievements in the field of education in general. In Baku we half-jokingly referred to the FIN-EST Project as the finest project.”

In the spring of 2015, a detailed action plan for the two-year period will be developed in collaboration with Azerbaijani project partners. The project will be launched in the autumn.

The victorious project team:  Head of Unit for FINEEC  Helka Kekäläinen, Director of EKKA Heli Mattisen and Resident Twinning Advisor Reijo Aholainen.

For more information contact Heli Mattisen, Director of EKKA, phone +372 517 8197