Partners of the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees meet in Strasbourg to discuss future actions
The project coordination group of the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees (EQPR) held its 10th meeting on 16 November in Strasbourg to discuss the results and future plans to ensure refugees’ access to education and the labor market.
The meeting was an opportunity to exchange information and good practices, including presentations by Leyla Kayacik, Council of Europe Special Representative on Migration and Refugees and Andreas Wisner, UNHCR Representative to the European Institutions in Strasbourg. The project now involves 20 partner countries and representatives of Albania, Andorra, Latvia, Poland and Portugal who in recent months have joined the project also attended the meeting.
During their discussions, the members of the Group took note of the results of the various activities implemented during the semester, in particular in view of the Ukrainian crisis. Since the start of its implementation, the EQPR has not only proven to be a credible and relevant tool for assessing the undocumented qualifications of refugees, but “it has also become a tool of trust between the various stakeholdersas pointed out Luca Lanterodirector of the Italian ENIC (CIMEA), both in the national context and in the wider European context. The scaling up of the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees was also mentioned as one of the future goals and Vesna Atanasovaprogram officer of the Education Department of the Council of Europe, presented, together with Luca Lantero, the new European Union/Council of Europe joint project “Supporting an effective national mechanism for the recognition of refugees’ qualifications in Italy”.
In his closing remarks Villano QiriaziHead of the Education Department, thanked the partners for their continued support and contribution to the project and announced that the Council of Europe will focus in the coming period on the development of a new legal instrument dedicated to the use of the EQPR in Council of Europe Member States and provide guidance to national authorities for specific actions for the recognition of refugee qualifications and capacity building.
Implemented by the Council of Europe since 2017, the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees allows refugees and asylum seekers to have their qualifications assessed even in the absence of full documentation. The EQPR helps refugees and asylum seekers to continue their studies or seek employment. It eliminates unnecessary and repeated additional assessments of the same qualifications in other European countries if and when the EQPR holder moves.