The paper aims to contribute to the on-going discussions on whether the solely international teams of experts are able to correctly grasp the national system-level features when evaluating the higher education institutions. As higher education systems are, generally, very diverse across EHEA, previous research on IEP emphasises the need for “evaluation teams [to] acquire adequate information on the country and its higher education system, which may be a high demand placed on the limited resources of the IEP secretariat” (Rovio-Johansson et. al., 2008, p. 53). However, our study shows that international experts accurately capture the system-level features. Even more, they bring an additional value to the institutions by referring to the European framework policies and practices, and by addressing the feasibility of these policies and practices for the individual institution.