After two years of negotiations, the law faculties of Münster and Reykjavík have once again concluded a partnership agreement on student and lecturer exchanges. Since 2002, there has been a partnership via the ITM as part of the Erasmus project. Over the years, a good and very personal cooperation and a lively mutual exchange developed. Iceland has become one of the most popular destinations for Münster law students, and professors and staff have also visited the distant partner university from time to time. In 2017 of all years, while two professors from Reykjavík spent a year as guests at ITM and the Faculty of Law, the partnership had to be put on hold for the time being. The Icelandic government had cut funding for internationalization. The very committed negotiations that followed initially failed due to the many bureaucratic hurdles. In the end, personal relationships and a crisis meeting on site in Reykjavík won out over bureaucracy and this strategically very important partnership can be continued. This example shows that the Faculty’s decision to place the supervision of international partnerships in the hands of the individual institutes is the right one. Without the intensive and very personal collaboration, the two universities would have been just another entry in a list of interchangeable names.
University of Iceland – Háskóli Íslands
