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Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Europass should help 3 Million Europeans on the labour market until 2010

Europass is a direct service to citizens that will help them to make their qualifications and competences clearly understood throughout Europe. It will therefore facilitate their mobility for both occupational and lifelong learning purposes.On 31 January - 1 February 2005, the Luxembourg Presidency of the EU together with the European Commission has launched the implementation of Europass with a conference that has gathered in the Grand Duchy 300 representatives of education and training stakeholders, as well as social partners, from 32 European countries.

"For all citizens that apply for a job or a learning opportunity, it is vital that their qualifications and competences are clearly understood and properly appreciated. Europass will help them to do so anywhere in Europe, as well as in their own Member State", said Ján Figel’, European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism at the launch conference. The commissioner added: "Europass will be a direct service to citizens. Our objective is that by 2010 some 3 million citizens will have used Europass to improve their position on the European labour market and to take advantage of the European lifelong learning area".

Established by a decision adopted at the end of 2004 by the European Parliament and the Council, Europass is one of three complementary instruments supporting mobility within the European strategy “Education and Training 2010”, along with the Ploteus portal launched in 2002 and the European Qualifications Framework now being developed in line with the agreement reached in December in Maastricht.

The implementation of Europass will need the active cooperation of all relevant stakeholders. This approach was indeed adopted for the launch conference[4], where not only the audience, but also most of the speakers were representatives of education and training stakeholders and social partners.

This initiative brings together into a coordinated framework – under the Europass label and with a common logo – five transparency documents that cover qualifications and competences in a lifelong learning perspective. Besides the Europass CV, the other Europass elements focus on language skills (Europass Portfolio of Languages), mobility experiences for learning purposes (Europass Mobility) and qualifications in higher education (Europass Diploma Supplements) and vocational training (Europass Certificate Supplement).

By integrating these elements into the Europass label, they will be easier to access and use, making them more widely known and therefore more effective. To this purpose, vital support will be given by the network of National Europass Centres : in each country, a National Europass Centre (list available on the Europass portal) will promote the new instrument and coordinate all related activities, in cooperation with the relevant organisations, networks and authorities, as well as with the social partners.

Europass is an open framework, which in future might include further elements to provide citizens with instruments focusing on specific sets of competences, for instance in relation to information technologies or to a given sector.

Source  CEDEFOP Portal dedicated to Europass

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