Over the past three decades, European higher education has developed an impressive architecture for doctoral education. Yet one of its earliest instruments has quietly fallen out of view.
The Doctor Europaeus, or European Doctorate label, was instituted in 1991 by the liaison committee of the European Union rectors’ conferences. It is therefore roughly 35 years old, and in my view it deserves both renewed attention and a thorough modernisation.
The label is a supplementary certificate added to a national doctorate.
It is awarded by the university itself, on its own authority and without approval from any supranational body, to candidates who fulfil four conditions: a research stay of at least three months in another European country, the assessment of the thesis by at least two reviewers based in two different European countries, the participation of at least one examiner from abroad in the defence committee, and the conduct of part of the defence in a European language other than that of the awarding country.
