Over the past 25 years, the international dimension of higher education (HE) has steadily gained importance. Internationalisation is a vital force of modern HE, but so far only a few approaches have been developed to assess its quality. This shortcoming should be alleviated by this project proposed by quality assurance agencies, Academic Cooperation Association (ACA), European stakeholder organisations and HE institutions.The overall aim of the project is to assess, reward and enhance internationalisation.The project will develop an assessment framework (ie. methodology) that can be used to assess the internationalisation of a programme or an institution and which, if completed successfully, can lead to the award of a European Certificate for Internationalisation. The Certificate is intended to confirm that a programme or an institution has successfully incorporated an international and intercultural dimension into the purpose, function and delivery of its education. The project is based on the consortium's commonly agreed framework for internationalisation and will focus on both enhancement and excellence. The framework will be tested in a series of pilot procedures in all European regions in which expert panels will apply the methodology to assess programmes or institutions. The knowledge gathered in the project will be exploited in workshops, conferences and publications. For further dissemination, the project intends to deploy a platform for good practices in internationalisation. The project will give HE programmes and institutions insight into their performance in the domain of internationalisation and will provide them with the means for improvements so that they can increase their competitiveness . The Certificate will lead to a considerable improvement in transparency of internationalisation in HE, which is beneficial for students, HE institutions and society. The project incorporates a strong European dimension and enhances coherence.