Qualifications and mobility in a globalising world: why equivalence matters

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The EU comprises the European Council (as distinct from the Council of Europe, which is not an EU institution), the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission. The European Council sets the EU’s agenda and priorities. Its membership comprises the heads – presidents or prime ministers – of member states, with foreign ministers also in attendance at meetings (‘summits’) along with the President of the European Commission (the ‘President’ being a member state represented by its head). The European Commission, Europe’s ‘civil service’, implements the agenda set by the European Council, proposing and drafting legislature. The European Parliament – whose members are elected by their national populations – monitors the actions of other EU institutions, approves the EU budget, and reviews the Commission’s legislative proposals before forwarding to the Council of Ministers for joint decision (the Council is in fact a series of different Councils, with different areas of responsibility, whose members are ministers with relevant portfolios in the various European governments). The European Parliament legislates jointly with the Council of Ministers in most areas of legislation, including citizenship rights and free movement of labour. 2. The renaming of the EEC as the European Union was one outcome of the Maastricht Treaty of 1993. 3. The new directive has three major sections, corresponding with the three general system directives that it has replaced: one dealing with those regulated professions that are in principle automatically recognised across member states (doctor, dentist, etc.), a second covering skilled trades, with the third embracing all other professions. 4. The Lisbon Recognition Convention encourages the granting of qualifications recognition to applicants unless there is a ‘substantial difference’ between an applicant’s qualification and that of the host country. But how substantial is substantial? This is a matter for interpretation on the part of the credential evaluators (the National Recognition Information Centres [NARICs], the European National Information Centres [ENICs], and admissions staff in higher education institutions). It would be interesting to know not only how often applications for recognition have been accepted or rejected, but when rejected because of a substantial difference what form this substantial difference took. Collection of this kind of information is not yet systematic. 5. West and Barham (this issue) comment on the inadequacy of data collection on student mobility within the EU – see also Kelo et al. 2006 Kelo, M., Teichler, U. and Wächter, B. 2006. Toward improved data on student mobility in Europe: Findings and concepts of the Eurodata Study. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3): 194–223. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. D’Artillac Brill (this issue) encountered a similar problem in terms of cross‐national statistics on professional migration, a problem noted also by Leśniowska (2008 Leśniowska, J. 2008. Migration patterns of Polish doctors within the EU. Eurohealth, 13(4): 7–8. [Google Scholar]). The Trends V Bologna Process progress report notes difficulties in both respects (Crosier et al. 2007 Crosier, D., Purser, L. and Smidt, H. 2007. Trends V: Universities shaping the European Higher Education Area, Brussels: European University Association. [Google Scholar], 42–44).