Since 1980, the educational capacity of many European institutions of higher education in the field of radiological and nuclear engineering has decreased, because of the conjunction of less interest among students and less interest among the academic and political authorities.

Although the situation widely differs from one university to other and from one country to other, many departments that were initially able to propose a large panel of orientations in this field had to reduce their offer and to concentrate it on a few specialities. On the other hand, financial restrictions have made more difficult to maintain and develop facilities and equipment needed for practical training of students.

For several years, an increased national and international cooperation is seen as an important contribution to find solutions to these problems. Several networks have been developed, some of them focused on specific domains, other concentrated on high level professional training, some strongly structured and other not, some developed with European help and other trying to grow on their own.

The CHERNE initiative is a proposal to develop a non-formal wide-scope open network to enhance cooperation, competence as well as equipment sharing between its partners. It should not be seen as a competition to the existing networks and welcomes any activity that would be organised in collaboration with them. But it has its own organisational philosophy and wants to keep its specificity.

• CHERNE is an open, non profit and non formal association, constituted as a network of Institutions of Higher Education, including Research Institutions closely linked to higher education, active in the radiological and/or nuclear field, which agree with the basic rules of the network, as expressed by the present declaration.

a) ORGANISATION

• CHERNE has a minimal administrative organisation, ensured by the secretary elected at the annual meeting. The secretary will coordinate and stimulate the activities of CHERNE, with the help of an advisory committee, the composition of which is approved by the annual meeting. The secretary will coordinate and stimulate the advisory committee, coordinate the CHERNE platform (webpage), with the help of a platform coordinator and his/her local ICT service, coordinate the CHERNE Bulletin, with the help of a Bulletin Coordinator, coordinate and organise the yearly CHERNE Workshop, with the help of the local organisers and the advisory committee, promote the network at relevant places and times (conferences, meetings, courses, …). At this moment it is www.cherne.ntua.gr. 
• The partners of CHERNE meet once a year to evaluate the activities of the network and discuss any proposal to extend or modify them. 

b) MEMBERS

•    Academic institutions, research institutions, companies or individuals are accepted as associate members.
•    Collective members (academic, research or companies) should be presented by two full members, including at least one European academic member. Documents for this presentation as well as the list of partners can be found at the official Web site.
•    The new membership should be approved by an authority of the partner, signing this declaration on all its pages. Presentation and approval documents should be sent to the Secretary as soon as possible and in any case before the annual meeting. A PDF version will be put on the official Web site.
•    The authority signing the declaration and approving the membership has to be a legal representative of the institution.
•    An individual member will be also proposed by two full members. The proposal will be in base to scientific and educational curriculum of the candidate, or for having played a prominent role in CHERNE, as representative of his/her university, when passing the representation to another colleague. 
•    The membership of all new members shall be approved by majority of members present at the Annual CHERNE Council.
•    Full members are academic or research institutions that have (co)organised a CHERNE activity in the last year or will do so in the next year. Full members have the right to vote in the general assembly.
•    Associated members who didn’t participate in any CHERNE activity during the last 5 years or were not present at any yearly CHERNE workshop during the last 5 years will not remain a member of the CHERNE network
•   For the moment no fee is foreseen for CHERNE membership.

c) ACTIVITIES

• Cooperation between the institutions should enhance the mutual support by learning from each other, by exchanging experiences, and by regular mutual reflections on what we can do to counteract the 'less interest among students' and the 'less interest among the academic and political authorities' and also on what we can learn from more successful or from less successful partners.
• The scope of CHERNE is not limited and any activity related to higher education in radiological and/or nuclear engineering can be proposed. 
• The list of the CHERNE activities, including the secretariat, the workshop, as well as the list of their organisers, is established annually at the end of the general assembly, for the past year and for the forthcoming year.
• Most of CHERNE activities will be organised for students.
• CHERNE activities are offered in priority to students of full members, and their organisation should involve at least one European academic member.
• Development of local activities made available to other students of the network should be kept as interesting.
• Without excluding the organisation of workshops devoted to teaching tools or methodology, or to common research subjects, we refer hereafter to «CHERNE activities» that should directly benefit to students of the partner’s universities, mainly at the Master level. If the activity is open to other participants, this should not limit the access of the students.
• The language used in CHERNE activities is English. The partner(s) organising the activity will communicate all documents well in advance to the other partners, in order to allow them to produce translations for their students when necessary.
• The CHERNE activities will be organised at no cost, or a very low fee, for the students coming from other partner universities/institutions. The organising partner will find and propose cheap accommodation for the students coming from abroad.
• When possible, the organisation of CHERNE activities will be included in ERASMUS exchanges. Therefore, the partners are encouraged to sign bilateral ERASMUS agreements. When possible, an activity might be organised as ERASMUS intensive programme. The recognition of ECTS credits should be organised in the framework of these bilateral agreements.
• CHERNE partners will be attentive to the necessity to include practical training in their activities for the students, including when possible an access to big facilities.
• A CHERNE activity should include at least a one-week/2 ECTS module. 
• Teaching modules are clearly seen as a possible kind of activity, but other types of cooperation may be also developed such as material for modules conveniently adapted in each university, e-learning, etc.
• Whereas experimental activities will usually imply the travel of students to the facilities, for theoretical/computational modules the professor might rather go to the students. 

Any proposal of modification to the rules of the network must be communicated to all partners one month before the annual meeting, and will be approved by the majority of the partners represented at this meeting. The authority of each institution will be informed of the modifications by its representative in CHERNE, but no new formal approval by this authority will be asked.
Please keep in mind that this declaration should give a framework, not a work programme (to be discussed in the workshop).

Minsk, 2 June 2015