As a UNESCO school, Graz International Bilingual School (GIBS) has been committed to the principles of a European educational dimension since its founding. Our school is based upon having English as the compulsory language of instruction, whereby we create a stable foundation for intercultural awareness and understanding amongst our student body. As we are committed to our children’s own individuality alongside social, cultural and linguistic diversification, Spanish, French and more recently Russian have established themselves as languages of instruction in our upper school course system. The teachers of these foreign languages are supported in their lessons by native speakers, who play an essential role in the long-term acquisition of language skills. Since we boast an ever-increasing number of children from other European and international countries among our students, we, as a school community, are of the opinion that the time has come to launch another innovative school project: the International Baccalaureate (IB) will enable all students to graduate with an international higher education entrance qualification in conjunction with their Austrian ‘Matura’. The IB programme consists of a flexible course/module system, the content and exam procedures of which are governed by international standardisation, and a core programme, within which participants are encouraged to make an active contribution to the shaping of society through critical analysis, social responsibility and creativity. The standardisation is a form of quality assurance, which offers comparability of the school’s attainment and achievement on a European level and also facilitates the cooperation of IB schools amongst themselves. In this sense, as an IB school, in accordance with our European school profile, we could make an even greater contribution to a European dimension of education in the following ways: firstly, entrance for our graduates into all the European institutions of higher education would be made much easier. Secondly, students as well as teachers would be able to actively participate in European intercultural dialogue through access to the IB network. Thirdly, our school would be able to gain valuable experience and insight into European educational standards and pass them onto other schools in our region.