Conference Paper

Lagging, in an economic sense, behind USA and Asia, rising unemployment, high costs of pensions in the national framework of member states, are some of the reasons why the European Union developped a strategy for economic development which is based on knowledge and scientific research. Namely, the European Union saw a way out of the recent crisis in improving the higher education system and in increasing the number of educated people. In this paper, the authors emphasise the relevance of higher education and its role in raising productivity not only in the national framework of each country, but also on the level of the EU. The paper discusses the main issues of the Bologna Declaration, the Lisbon Strategy, Europe 2020 Strategy, and the programs implemented by the European Union to raise the level of the higher education system, to recognise foreign diplomas and to increase the mobility of students and lecturers. In a comparative approach the paper shows how Erasmus Mundus and Tempus programs are used in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.The authors chose to compare these three countries considering that Croatia recently gained the status of candidate for EU, that Serbia still has not gained the candidate status, while Slovenia has been in the EU since 2004. The research was done on the basis of the old status of countries because more recent data was not available to the authors. The research problem is set in the form of the question: “Which country, Serbia, Croatia or Slovenia, makes more use of European educational programs?” The conclusion of this work, as well as the empirical part, contains suggestions for the improvement of higher education and the Lifelong Learning Program, i.e. their application.