The joint European Union and Council of Europe action “Quality education for all” hosted the roundtable “The law on academic integrity-trends and challenges” on 16 December 2021 in Podgorica. The event served as a platform for lively discussions with academic staff and policy makers including the Ministry of education, science, culture and sports, the Ethics Committee, the Anti-corruption agency, the Agency for quality assurance in higher education and the members of judiciary.

The attendees were encouraged to speak about the very important issue of preventing unethical behaviour through regulatory and institutional reforms, which have taken place in Montenegro with the recent adoption of the Law on academic integrity.

In her opening remarks, Evgenia Giakoumopoulou, Head of Operations, Council of Europe Programme Office in Podgorica underlined that “the law always follows the change in society, not the other way around so addressing integrity issues should go beyond legislative and institutional framework”.

Neda Ojdanic, acting Director General of the Directorate for Tertiary Education and ENIC / NARIC Centre in the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports continued, and in her opening words, informed participants that the ministry is closely monitoring implementation of the law and takes note of potential bottlenecks.

Mara Scepanovic, president of the Ethics Committee, presented the key challenges in handling cases of alleged academic misconduct where she pointed out inconsistent provisions of the law that resulted in challenging the committee`s decisions before the Administrative Court and their subsequent annulment. Committee member, Snezana Miladinovic–Drobnic provided a legal analysis of the law content recommending some practice and regulation improvements.

The roundtable also gave participants the opportunity to hear from Muriel Poisson and Jacques Hallak, current and former UNESCO experts, on various international experiences in setting up ethical bodies in higher education. They provided an overview of best practices from various countries not only in Europe but worldwide.

Finally, representatives of ethical bodies from the public University of Montenegro and private University Donja Gorica spoke about rules and practices as well as about real cases which reflected how the culture of academic integrity is promoted within those two higher education institutions.

Participants discussed in great depth the law on academic integrity: its shortcomings and the positive features of the law itself and accompanying practice. They also identified steps that policy makers in Montenegro could take to enable improvements.

In closing, it was stated that the law provided a good start but that to efficiently safeguard integrity requires action not only from those directly affected by an existing law or policy, but from society as a whole including primary and secondary levels of education. The Council of Europe offered its assistance in this regard.

The meeting was organised within the framework of the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.