The future of work in the EU

One big promise from the European Union is the free movement of people and goods.

Therefore, mutual understanding of competences and qualifications is crucial to make labour market mobility in the EU reality. And it has been done a lot in this regard: NQFs, EQF, ECTS and ECVET are so called transparency tools currently used by all member states to support transparency of certificates, diplomas and qualifications.

Ultimately, transparency is necessary to value and to be able to remunerate persons’ work in accordance with their skills, knowledge and competences.

With the support of the European Commission, EuropeActive is undertaking the Blueprint project to support employment and skills cooperation in the European Active Leisure (fitness & outdoor) sector. In order to support EU-wide recognition, EuropeActive initiated discussions and bilateral meetings with national coordination points for national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) to promote national recognition of sectoral fitness qualifications.

It has been the next logical step for the organisation since the development of EuropeActive’s European standards for fitness professionals over ten years ago. Today, EuropeActive’s standards are widely used in the member states and serve as the base for fitness qualifications in Belgium (vl), the United Kingdom and Poland.

Already widely used is as well the outdoor animator qualification, designed by the European Confederation of Outdoor Employers (EC-OE): the qualification is already in use in four members states including Greece, Belgium (vl), France and Portugal.