The European Commission, authorizing Eurostat, aims to harmonize public sector accounting in Europe. Thereby, European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) are to be developed that use the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) as a basis of reference. As public sector accounting in Europe is currently very heterogeneous, professionals and academics in Europe face tremendous challenges. In particular, there will be a large need for university graduates that are knowledgeable in public sector accounting and that are aware of the differing public sector accounting regimes across Europe.

In order to account for this development, this project aims to develop an academic module for Bachelor's or Master's degree programmes that concentrates on European Public Sector Accounting.

Building on the goals of the 2011 EU Modernisation Agenda, we seek to develop and implement a module with European-wide relevance in order to improve the quality of our teaching and training activities and the job opportunities of our students. Thereby we aim to strengthen our internationalisation strategies by cooperating with renowned experts in the field on a long-term basis. By developing a course being validated with ECTS, this project also regards flexibility of higher education studies. Besides the module curriculum (Intellectual Output 1) and the open-access to the web materials and recorded lectures, this project aims to develop and publish a textbook (Intellectual Output 2) that is of use for students, lecturers and professionals across Europe.

DiEPSAm (Developing and implementing European Public Sector Accounting modules) is a cooperation between

• the Johannes Kepler UniversityLinz (JKU; Austria),
• the University ofTampere (UTA; Finland),
• the University ofRostock (UR; Germany),
• the University of Leicester (UL; United Kingdom) and
• the University of Coimbra (UC; Portugal).

The aim of this strategic partnership is

• to develop a university module on European Public Sector Accounting,
• to test and evaluate it in the strategic partner universities and
• to transfer it to other universities across Europe.

Thereby this project keeps track of the harmonization of European Public Sector Accounting and the respective EPSAS. Yet, there is no academic module on public sector accounting that takes an overarching European perspective and integrates comparative views. The strategic partners of this project represent diverse national public sector accounting traditions, thereby enriching the project by contradicting views and leading to the discussion of alternative approaches. By setting up this project, the strategic partners set forth their internationalisation strategies by offering a transnational, English-speaking module that will be transferrable by adopting credits of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).