Skills Portabilty Act

PURPOSE: to facilitate the portability of qualifications and skills across the EU in the context of free movement of workers (Skills Portability Act).

PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.

ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.

BACKGROUND: the Single Market’s full potential depends on enabling professionals to move freely across the Union. Barriers related to qualifications and skills are one factor hindering individuals to make full use of their free movement rights and to work in another Member State. Without improved information on qualifications and skills obtained in other Member States and tools facilitating effectively the portability of such qualifications and skills, businesses and workers face difficulties when considering opportunities across the EU.

This proposal forms part of the Skills Portability Initiative (SPI), which is a key component of the Fair Labour Mobility Package (FLMP). The skills portability initiative will modernise procedures for recognising professional qualifications in the single market. It can also facilitate mobility back to regions of origin, by ensuring that qualifications and skills acquired elsewhere are understood and recognised when people return.

CONTENT: the proposal aims to give workers, employers and national authorities across the EU access to reliable and comparable information on qualifications and skills issued within the Union, and to enable them to use interoperable and verifiable digital attestations of qualifications and skills. In doing so, they will have access to simplified, effective and cost-efficient means to carry, prove, read, understand and compare qualifications and skills obtained in another Member State. In this way, it supports better matching of jobs and workers and helps reduce under-utilisation of skills across the EU.

In addition, more comparable information is expected to promote fairness and quality jobs for EU mobile workers by ensuring their qualifications are better understood and recognised whether they move to another Member State or return to their country of origin.

The proposal:

- sets out the trust framework for digital qualification attestations, which should be retrievable electronically by holders of qualifications. They are to be issued within European Digital Identity Wallets (EUDI wallets) as qualified electronic attestations of attributes;

- lays down that Member States should issue digital qualification attestations, free of charge for the holders. It also lays down the data requirements for digital qualification attestations, the fact that they should be recognised as evidencing qualification awarded to the holders and be valid across the EU.

- stresses that qualifications awarded in the ten years before entry into force will be available digitally within two weeks, upon request, and a mechanism will be put in place to also issue older qualifications;

- sets out conditions for the issuance of digital qualification attestations. It states that holders may request a digital qualification attestation for qualifications awarded to them, which should be issued to their European Digital Identity Wallets upon the qualification holder’s request if the qualification comes from an accredited awarding body listed in the relevant list and the holder has an active European Digital Identity Wallet;

- sets out the effects of revocation or suspension of a digital qualification attestation, including the refusal of issuance where the underlying qualification is withdrawn or suspended, the sharing of revocation information, and the non-recognition of revoked or suspended attestations for as long as that status remains in place;

- sets out the framework for verification by relying parties which requires Member States to ensure that relying parties can verify digital qualification attestations, including accreditations and the status of qualifications;

- sets out the requirement for Member States to provide information on qualifications, awarding bodies and accreditations through the Europass platform. The platform will provide an easy and free resource for employers and workers who would like to compare the content of qualifications gained in different Member States. The Commission should provide a digital tool to compare qualifications in Europass;

- sets out how the Qualifications Digitalisation Group will support and facilitate Member States’ cross-border cooperation and exchange of information on trust services, European Digital Identity Wallets, notified electronic identification schemes, semantic model and digital qualification attestations.

Budgetary implications

The proposal entails budgetary implications for the Union, principally linked to the development and improvement of a comparison tool in Europass, the development of a reference software for the digital verification tool; the back office tool to support the Member States sharing information on qualifications, accreditation and awarding bodies with Europass; possible support to Member States in their implementation of issuance system for the digital qualification attestations and the Secretariat of the Qualifications Digitalisation Group.

The estimated budgetary impact for 2028 and beyond does not pre-judge the next Multiannual Financial Framework. The source of financing and scope of Union financial commitment in the post-2027 period remain subject to the outcome of interinstitutional negotiations on the MFF 2028-2034 and thereafter will be determined through the annual budgetary procedure.