The European Union’s Commission has revealed in a report published on February 23 that the Member States are lagging behind in meeting the 2025 deadline set by a recommendation of the Council of the EU to start recognizing diplomas issued in the territory of each other.

In its report, the Commission has presented the progress made by the Member States in the automatic mutual recognition of higher and upper secondary education qualifications and periods of learning abroad, pointing out that more work needs to be done in order to meet the aspirations for 2025, Erudera.com reports.

The report also highlights the importance that it has for the EU education area the mutual recognition of diplomas by next year.

“Full implementation by all EU Member States would be an essential part of the European Education Area and would facilitate the mobility of students and apprentices across the EU. For example, a student holding a license giving access to a master's degree in one Member State should be eligible for a master's degree in all the other Member States,” highlights a press release of the Commission issued regarding the report.

Amongst other, the report points out that at the time of the adoption of the Council Recommendation, in 2018, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, Malta, Poland, Romania and Sweden already had automatic recognition for all EU countries embedded in their national legislation.

Whereas another four – Austria, Croatia, Italy and Spain later adapted their legislation to the Council recommendation. The Czech Republic, Greece, and Slovakia, on the other hand, are still in the process of doing so.

In spite of the progress made in this aspect, the Commission highlights that national legislation for automatic recognition, does not necessarily mean that the legislation is correctly and fully applied on the ground, though the same is a perquisite.

The report also notes that while the Bologna and EU transparency tools are in place in most of the Member States, in 11 of them they are not fully implemented, what hampers trust between the Member States.

At the same time, only half of the Member States have in place national guidance for institutions, regular training provision and utilization of online tools for recognition decisions, which the report asserts that it is another problematic issue for the full implementation of the Council recommendation.

Greece Lagging Behind Most in Recognition of Diplomas Issued in Other EU Countries

The report also contains a color-coded table which presents the progress that each of the Member States have made in mutual recognition of diplomas in several areas, including compliance with European and Bologna transparency tools, measures for capacity, monitoring and evaluation, automatic recognition of higher education qualifications, upper secondary education qualifications, learning periods abroad – higher education, etc.

According to this table, Greece is the one EU country lagging most behind the others, when it comes to the mutual and automatic recognition of diplomas issued in the rest of the EU.

The table points out that Greece has made full progress only in one out of seven fields of assessment, that of undertaking the necessary measures for capacity building and support for institutions and agencies.

The country has also made moderate progress in automatic recognition of learning periods abroad for higher education, while the other five fields are all red, which means almost not work has been done.