EUROPASS

All stakeholders actively contribute to the promotion and management of Europass documents.

Challenges Addressed

Increase the mobility of people in Europe for education and employment purposes Promote self-assessment Tackling unemployment

Europass consists of the following five elements:

  1. the Europass Curriculum Vitae (completed on individual level for qualifications, professional experience, skills and competences);
  2. the Europass Language Passport (completed on individual level for language skills);
  3. the Europass Certificate Supplement (issued by the authorities that award VET certificates, to add further information, make them more comprehensible to employers and institutions outside the issuing country);
  4. the Europass Diploma Supplement (issued by higher education institutions along with graduates’ degrees or diplomas, to make them more comprehensible outside the country awarded;
  5. the Europass Mobility Document (records all organised period of time that a person spends in another European country for the purpose of learning or training).

Policy objectives

Career Management Skills Contributing the rise of mobility of people in Europe for education and employment purposes ICT in Lifelong Guidance Improving careers information Improving employability and supporting older workers Raising the skills and qualifications of adults Raising the skills and qualifications of young people Supporting people at risk and disadvantaged groups

INNOVATIVE ASPECTS OF LMI

Innovative user profiling

Provision of additional information on the awards not available elsewhere, to make it easily understood to employers and institutions in other countries

Provision of external links to available EC employment, guidance and educational services

INNOVATIVE USE OF ICT

Combination with offline elements Connection with third parties (LMI, PES, etc.) e-portfolio Interactive online tools Open source Personalised information storage

Results and impacts obtained

Success Factors Points of Attention

Transferability elements

Socio-economic-political context

When Europass was initiated in 1991, mobility of students and employees around Europe was around 3%-4% due to reasons such as language barriers, lack of recognition of formal education and skills across Europe, absence of necessary legislation to facilitate mobility, etc. In 1998, the European Forum on Transparency of Vocational Qualifications concluded in the development of the Europass, as well as a network of National Reference Points for Vocational Qualifications (NRPs).

Financial requirements

An annual amount of approximately EUR 2 million is being assigned to the initiative.

HR requirements

Cedefop is responsible for the overall operation and maintenance of Europass website: design and elaboration of the different templates uploaded on the website and the quality control of Europass’ different aspects.

Cedefop is supported technically by external IT organisations: e.g. in the development of additional, new modules; the provision of on-site services, etc.

ICT elements

Europass interoperability is based upon a common vocabulary that leverages the benefits of web services and public APIs.

Non-ICT elements

Stakeholders' contribution to promotion and management of Europass documents.

Future developments & Trends

The most important trend identified to be affecting the future course of Europass is interoperability. From an LMI perspective, Europass aims to explore the ways to further improve the job-matching aspects of the documents, to provide data mining and to accomplish skills intelligence.