The Government of the Republic of Slovenia, through this event, took advantage of the momentum it has created with its activities in open education on both national and international levels so as to align all main policy making bodies in the Western Balkans region into an integrated initiative.

Download the background paper here.

The Government of the Republic of Slovenia organised a mini-conference featuring presentations by Ministers on “Vision and proposals for Openingup the Western Balkans”, experts as well as both academia and industry from the region on“Partnerships and alliances in the region”. This document proposed an initial set of agreeable standpoints and initial projects for these presentations. As stated above, there area number of bottom-up actions and a portfolio of top-down political attempts to bring theregion together. Therefore, Slovenia proposes that the Western Balkan region be the first EU region to actively and comprehensively adopts thee European Commission's Opening up Education  communication, UNESCO’s Paris OER Declaration, the results of the 2nd WorldCongress on Open Educational Resources and, most importantly, the blueprint of the national OpeningupSlovenia initiative, enabling the implementation of the idea of “Openingup Member States”