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Greece, a [European Union] EU-member state since 1981, lagged behind other European countries in the development of a national quality assurance system. This article charts the route to the establishment of a quality assurance system in Greece. While national evaluation and accreditation systems were established in most European countries during the mid-1980s and 1990s, any attempt of assessing the quality of education and research or other services provided by Greek higher education institutions and of rendering social accountability for the public resources that they received, was considered a threat to their autonomy. Moreover, while Greece was a signatory state of the Bologna Declaration, the Bologna Process has been 'demonised' and the commitments concerning quality assurance remained a dead letter. However, it was the Bologna Process that led to the national quality assurance system being established by law in 2005, close to the Bergen Ministerial Conference. The stocktaking exercise played a key role in this development not only in the case of Greece but also for some other South East European countries.