University calls for cooperation in preparing strategy

The content of a package of bills on universities, higher education and scientific research is such that they should not have been sent into parliamentary procedure, and the way they were prepared made it impossible to correct and amend them in order to make them acceptable to the academic community in the continuation of the procedure, Bjelis said today, informing reporters about the conclusions of the university senate's meeting on Tuesday evening.

He said that the university was willing to participate in the preparation of the national strategy for the development of science and tertiary education and legislation compiled on the basis of that strategy.

He said he expected relevant political actors, including the education and science ministry, the government and parliamentary committees, to fully cooperate for this purpose.

Student representative Danko Relic said that the Zagreb University Students' Association did not support the suspension of lectures and exams.

Four representatives of this association abstained from voting at the senate's meeting last evening.

Relic said that students also found the tertiary education bills unacceptable which was why their organisation sent objections and proposals to the education ministry. According to Relic, they are now waiting for a response.

The bills in parliamentary procedure were the reason for a strike launched by the Academic Solidarity trade union at Zagreb's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences earlier in the day.

This trade union forwarded to the parliamentary education and science committee its proposals and amendments regarding the bills.

The union expects the committee to jettison those three bills and withdraw them from parliamentary procedure, saying that it was a precondition for ceasing the strike.