On June 18th a round table on in Education took place in Sofia under the initiative of DIGITAL REPUBLIC and have provided a platform for discussion on the current issues on European scale. The event was part of the official calendar of the European Parliament Bureau Bulgaria and has been performed in the perspective of the Bulgarian Presidency of EU, that ends in July. The participants in the Round Table represented the variety of stakeholders in Bulgaria and Europe – research/academia (prof. George Dimitrov, prof. Mariyana Lazarova), interested not-for-profit organizations (Lisette Kalshoven, Alek Tarkowski, Natalia Mileszyk), projects (Georgi Simeonov, Claudia Iordache) as well representatives of Bulgarian institutions ( Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications).

The event has provided floor for the discussion on the most current trends/issues in the educational sphere on regional and European scale. The ongoing controversial Copyright Reform in EU was discussed in perspective of education/educational exceptions, especially in the perspective of the effective Bulgarian Copyright Law. A consensus was achieved between the participants for future steps towards better understanding and actions for DIGITAL REPUBLIC and the representatives of Ministry of Education will join efforts towards the achievement of better educational copyright exception in Bulgaria. Another accent of the event was the discussion on open access and open educational resources in Europe in Bulgaria. Again, it was concluded that future efforts in this direction are necessary to be taken in Bulgaria. For this aim, DIGITAL REPUBLIC and OpenAIRE Bulgaria will join their forces.