EA was invited to a third meeting on ESCO project, held on the 1st February 2018 in Brussel and hosted by EC-DG EMPL.

ESCO is the multilingual classification of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations, relevant for the EU labor market, education and training. In December 2017, EA was previously invited to present its activities and the benefits of accreditation and conformity assessment services on Certifications of persons (welders, IT expert, auditors, data protection officers notably).

The objective that time was to present and discuss the preliminary results of the analysis of the field of certifications of persons. Two members of EA Executive Committee, Emanuele Riva (ACCREDIA, the Italian NAB) and Andreas Steinhorst (Executive Secretary of EA) attended this meeting, which gathered also representatives from DG EMPL and consulting companies such as PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), Everis and Cognizone.

As main results, the participants agreed that the analysis should focus on:

  • Potential complaints related to the certifications. For example: at system level, any critical situation in which complaints arose with respect to the process of certifying people
  • The involvement of National public authorities in the accreditation process and stakeholders in the development of private schemes
  • Mechanisms of mutual recognition among EU and international NABs (i.e. multilateral agreements)
  • The review and integration of the information related to the minimum requirements of each certification scheme
  • Completing the current project with one International certification and/or other Countries’ certification related to a law
  • The Development of a trial for Qualifications dataset register (QDR) – certification inclusion
  • EQF (European Qualifications Framework) Advisory Group: the pilot project team could be involved in the discussion on international certifications that will be arranged by an EQF AG subgroup.

A meeting will be arranged by PwC together with ACCREDIA, Everis and Cognizone with the European Commission to present the final results of this analysis by end of March 2018.

This presentation should help EA members to convince their Member States, and mainly their Ministries of Education and Employment, that accreditation is a good tool to guarantee the process of recognition of schemes and certification in the field of Certification of persons.