eu4journalists

Education - Culture - Youth

4. Recognition of Qualifications

Europass

Because of the huge differences among the national education and training systems and in order to help citizens to present their qualifications and skills throughout Europe, the EU initiated Europass to ensure the transparency of competences and to promote occupational mobility. Europass, that since December 2004 replaces the old Europass Training, consists of 5 documents and citizens can find them in all official EU languages in the Europass portal. The backbone of the Europass portfolio is the European CV. Through the Europass portal, citizens will be able to complete online - with the help of specific guidelines and tutorials - their Europass CV and their Europass Language Passport - a part of the Language Portfolio where citizens can describe in detail their language skills. The Europass portal also provides comprehensive information on the other documents that are not completed directly by citizens, but issued to them by the relevant organisations – universities, training centres, etc.

Education Qualifications Framework

In July 2005 the Commission released Towards a European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning which would enable, in part, the Berlin initiative of creating a cross-border certification system for academic degrees and for vocational skills. In November 2006 the education committee passed the Education Qualifications Framework, to be reviewed by the Parliament and the Council and hopefully adopted in 2007. The proposal includes the goal of having member states link their national qualifications to the EQF by 2009. It is hoped that the EQF will one day facilitate the movement of citizens and their work qualifications, for work or study, between member states.

European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)

Introduced in 1989, the ECTS creates a standard, international system of grading higher education students throughout the Union, with one semester corresponding to 60 ECTS credits. ECTS credits are awarded with other, national credit award systems and are intended to make qualifications transparent throughout the EU.