Internationalization of Higher Education for Active Citizenship: European Perspective

The citizenship of the European Union was introduced with Treaty of Maastricht that was established in 1992. That political action moved European integration process from trading to civil and cultural dimension. The question do the European citizens really feel “European” is also combined in identity, which is a very important factor for enhancing European integration and democratisation. The creation of a European identity and a European citizenship had a major impact on the political initiatives in higher education and its internationalisation. In accordance to that, our basic aim is to get the answer to the question “What is today’s role of internationalisation of higher education in creating European identity and consequently, in active citizenship”? We used the descriptive method; variety of data was obtained from content analysis of different kind of domestic and foreign literature. Conceptualisation of key concepts was made to present the development of internationalisation in the perspective of promoting and creating a European identity. In the beginning of 1980’s basic role of higher education in creating European identity was in the context of mobility of students and academic staff. The core stone was promoting intra-European mobility, for creating common higher education era, to gain the mutual understanding focused on European identity and European citizenship. Nevertheless, these focuses were soon supplemented by the wider one that can promote diversity of identities: to feel national, European or global/international.