Report of QUAACAS to ELFA at the AGM in

Barcelona, February 2007

QUAACAS Membership

The committee is composed of Julian Lonbay ( Birmingham ), Tom Latrup-Pedersen (Aarhus), Anne Pélissier-Klebès ( Strasbourg ), Michiel van de Kasteelen ( Utrecht ) and Jacek Petzel ( Warsaw ).

Potted History

QUAACAS (Quality Assurance, Accreditation and Assessment Committee), was first discussed and agreed during the ELFA General Assembly in Birmingham (2003). The ELFA Board agreed and invitations to join the Committee were sent out. QUAACAS first met in May 2003 in Birmingham. Its first concrete result was a successful conference on Quality Assurance, Accreditation and European Legal Education, held in Utrecht from 19-20 November 2004 where, inter alia, the notion of Tuning Legal Studies was discussed following the presentation of Julia Gonzales (Deusto). The first QUAACAS Newsletter (January 2005), circulated to all ELFA members, indicated the intention to join in with the Tuning project and seek EU funding for a thematic network on this topic. At the Graz conference (2005) the QUAACAS report explained the Tuning Legal Studies Project and the General Assembly was keen for QUAACAS to participate in the project for LAW.

After an open call (early 2005) to all ELFA members to participate, the first meeting of national representatives in the Tuning Legal Studies project was held at the University of Deusto, Bilbao in early September 2005 in a conference discussing aspects of the Tuning process for Law. Following this Bilbao conference the on-line questionnaires on generic and specific competences for law graduates were devised, discussed and agreed and then set up on the computers of the University of Deusto, Bilbao. National representatives needed to persuade various cohorts to respond on-line.

The data collection proved to be a difficult and lengthy process. The databases for generic skills were closed in late April 2006 and the results and analysis for the generic skills were expected to ready in May 2006 but in fact, after delays in Bilbao, were in fact only available in early 2007. This delay has had a knock-on effect on the plans for a conference on Tuning-related issues that was initially planned for November 2006, then because of the delays, postponed to April 2007 (this delay was duly notified to members of the ELFA Board in June 2006) and currently the conference planned for late September 2007 to allow an initial discussion of the issues raised by the Tuning Legal Studies project, together with the CCBE-related issues. Once finalised it is intended that the conference programme will be circulated to ELFA members.

Thematic Network

In 2005 Quaacas planned to try to create a thematic network in law within the Socrates programme of the European Community. A bid was duly made, but it was unsuccessful since not all EU countries were represented within it. In 2006 QUAACAS was informed that another network in law had been accepted precluding our application. Additionally ELFA’s Cicero legacy was once more alive. It is possible that in 2007 we should consider making an application. The main advantage of such a bid, if successful, is the financial means granted to enable the network to operate.

Current

The Tuning group last met together in Leuven (ELFA conference 2006) and will meet again in Barcelona (ELFA 2007) to discuss the results so far achieved and to plan and discuss future activities. It is difficult to meet (and even to undertake the tasks of the Tuning group) because of the parlous state of finance which essentially means participants bear their own costs. Provisionally the Tuning group plans to meet in Brussels in June 2007 (with the EC Commission) and in late September at the QUAACAS CCBE conference. We plan to ask for an increased allocation in the budget to support the work of QUAACAS and the Tuning Group. In particular several jurisdictions have been unable to attend meetings for financial reasons. We note that the total funds of ELFA at 31 December 2006 were over 80,000 euro.

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