The Draghi plan emphasises that a harmonised recognition of skills across Europe is a factor for competitiveness. The next step is to take action…
One year after its publication, recent weeks have seen widespread commentary on the difficulty European authorities face in implementing the recommendations of the Draghi plan. Designed to boost the competitiveness of the continent, the plan contains around a hundred recommendations across a wide range of areas, from innovation to taxation, energy policy, and investment.
Mobility of talent
The plan also includes an important chapter on skills management in Europe. It begins by highlighting the shortage of candidates – which is not only observed in Belgium – in both highly specialised and low-skilled occupations. On average, 54% of European companies, regardless of size, consider skills shortages among their most urgent problems.
In fact, a recent report by the European Investment Bank states that, alongside high energy costs, the inability to recruit a sufficiently skilled workforce is a major barrier to business growth. ‘Improving the availability of skills in the workforce could unlock long-term investment and help promote the EU’s overall competitiveness,’ the report emphasises.
To achieve this ambition, there is an urgent need to raise education and training levels across the EU and increase employment rates. But it is also necessary to promote greater worker mobility, enabling them to move easily to regions where their skills are most in demand by businesses. While language and cultural barriers will always exist across Europe, the idea is to ensure a level of fluidity closer to that found in the United States, where it is common to move from state to state as one's career evolves.
Recognition across borders
The challenge also raises the question of the recognition of professional and academic qualifications across the European Union. European Directive 2005/36/EC establishes such a system. Its transposition into Belgian law provides, for certain regulated professions, either automatic recognition or the processing of applications according to specific deadlines and standard criteria. This applies, for example, to several medical professions and architects. Belgian law also recognises other professions, including certain jobs in transport, insurance intermediaries, real estate agents, teachers, accountants, and auditors.
Outside these regulated professions, no formal recognition or diploma equivalence is generally required to work in the private sector. However, in several cases, access to employment for someone trained abroad may require diploma equivalence. Such equivalence is also mandatory for any profession in the public sector or in institutions subsidised by public authorities, allowing foreign studies to be assessed against similar studies in Belgium.
Beyond administrative recognition, the Draghi plan now calls for additional efforts, particularly the harmonisation of certification processes to make training pathways and skills validation understandable and recognised across the EU. This could be achieved, for example, through micro-certifications and digital badges. Experts also advocate greater promotion of European technical and vocational education and training through specific recognition mechanisms and modular training.
Bicycle repairers, mushroom pickers
The message of the Draghi report seems to have been received by the European Commission. Last May, its Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné announced, among other measures aimed at strengthening the internal market, that he wanted to facilitate the mobility of skills, because there are still too many barriers in Europe. In Belgium, for instance, bicycle repair remains a regulated profession. The same applies to mushroom picking in Poland. ‘Germany, where a third of professions are regulated, is the champion in this field,’ said Mr Séjourné, quoted by our colleagues at Le Monde. The Commission therefore wishes to facilitate the recognition of qualifications between member states in the coming months.
Non-EU nationals?
What about those who graduated outside the EU? Alex Singirankabo is a project coordinator at Convivial, an association that supports refugees and new arrivals in their social and professional integration in Belgium. Every year, the association helps nearly 300 of them with their applications. ‘For non-EU nationals, a degree obtained in the EU combined with two years of relevant professional experience can lead to automatic recognition of the degree. But outside of these exceptional cases, equivalence will require the submission of a full application,’ he explains.
In Brussels, recognition of regulated professions falling under the Common Community Commission is handled directly by this body. The ENIC-NARIC centre of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles provides information on the steps to be taken. A new digitalised procedure for the equivalence of higher education qualifications has recently reduced the waiting time to one or two months. However, the situation is more complicated for secondary school diplomas, explains Alex Singirankabo.
He also points out that obtaining equivalence can be costly and time-consuming, and in many cases the benefits are uncertain. ‘Among our audience, the vast majority of recognitions obtained are for a level of study, but not for a specific qualification. This allows people to claim certain scales in the civil service or opens the way to further studies. But it does not necessarily help them find a job, as the skills specific to the qualification are not recognised. So you have to be sure that it's worth the effort,’ he sums up. As such, Convivial's workshops primarily guide beneficiaries in defining a solid career plan that goes far beyond administrative validation.
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