Moving between countries to learn or work should not mean starting from zero when proving what you know. Yet qualifications and skills acquired in one European country are still not always recognised, understood or trusted in another. Addressing this challenge is at the heart of the European Commission's forthcoming Skills Portability Initiative, which aims to facilitate labour mobility, help tackle skills shortages and strengthen EU competitiveness through greater transparency and digitalisation of skills and qualifications.
Two new Cedefop publications provide comparative evidence on the barriers that continue to limit skills portability—and on the measures that can help overcome them. One examines how countries recognise and validate foreign vocational qualifications, while the other explores how digital tools, including qualifications databases and digital credentials, can support the documentation, exchange and verification of learning outcomes.
Together, the publications show that effective skills portability depends on two complementary foundations: transparent recognition arrangements and trusted, interoperable digital systems that make qualifications and skills easier to understand, verify and use across borders.
Two building blocks for skills portability
Recognition and validation of foreign VET qualifications in Europe: comparative insights for skills portability analyses how the EU-27, Norway and Iceland recognise qualifications obtained abroad for further learning and employment purposes. It shows that national arrangements differ considerably in their governance, assessment approaches and outcomes. Although recognition and validation pursue closely related objectives, they generally operate through separate structures. The study also finds that ENIC (European Network of Information Centres) and NARIC (National Academic Recognition Information Centres in the European Union) centres, traditionally associated with higher education, already provide VET-related guidance in most countries, while recognition for non-regulated professions remains the least transparent area. The publication is accompanied by a comparative dataset covering all national arrangements analysed.
Digital tools for the portability of learning outcomes: insights from a ReferNet survey focuses on how countries are using qualifications databases and digital credentials to improve the documentation, sharing and verification of learning outcomes. While all participating countries recognise the value of these tools, implementation remains uneven. Systems for issuing and storing digital credentials are generally more advanced than the interoperable verification mechanisms needed to ensure that qualifications can be trusted and used seamlessly across borders.
Taken together, the publications identify four priorities for strengthening skills portability across Europe:
transparent and reliable procedures for recognising qualifications acquired abroad
stronger coordination and information sharing between recognition authorities, education and training providers, employers and other relevant stakeholders
connected digital tools that make qualifications, credentials and learning outcomes easier to document, verify and share
greater interoperability between national systems to support learning and labour mobility across Europe.
Supporting European priorities
The publications come at a timely moment, as the European Commission prepares the forthcoming Skills Portability Initiative under the Fair Labour Mobility Package.
Together, they provide policymakers, VET providers, recognition authorities and social partners with comparative evidence on how recognition arrangements and digital tools can improve the cross-border recognition, documentation and verification of qualifications and learning outcomes. By identifying common challenges and emerging practices across Europe, they offer practical insights that can inform future policy discussions and support the development of more transparent, user-oriented and interoperable approaches across countries.
