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Supporting the development of a national coordination mechanism for recognising refugees’ qualifications in Italy

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Supporting reforms to achieve fairer, more efficient, and more sustainable migration, asylum and border management processes

Funding Programme
Year
  • 2022

Supporting the development of a national coordination mechanism for recognising refugees’ qualifications in Italy

The European Commission, together with the Council of Europe, is supporting Italy in fostering reforms for scaling up the recognition of refugees’ qualifications through the development of a national coordination mechanism within public sectors, in and beyond academia. 

Context

Since 2018, Italy has participated in the Council of Europe’s European Qualification Passport for Refugees (EQPR), a methodology that allows the recognition of academic qualifications also in cases of insufficient or lacking documentation. 

Typically, migrants are polarized in low skilled jobs, inter alia construction, agriculture, hospitality and care. Such polarization is, among other factors, aggravated by the lack of integrated, coordinated processes for recognizing qualifications acquired abroad, particularly in the absence of official documentation. In this context, there is a need for mainstreaming the use of EQPR methodology to the employment sector and the other public administrations in order to facilitate its use for professional ends, including in sectors with regulated professions, such as health, where some 10% of workers are third country nationals and where the need has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an aging population. 

Support delivered

The Commission, in collaboration with the Council of Europe, is supporting the Ministry for University and Research to:  

  • Conduct a multi-level situational analysis to map the refugees’ qualifications, involved stakeholders and to identify priority sectors where the recognition of qualifications is mostly needed; 
  • Propose policy options and recommendations based on consultations with stakeholders and international best practices and validate the proposals in dedicated workshops; 
  • Organise capacity-building activities for the targeted stakeholders on EQPR methodology and its advantages;
  • Test the fast-track recognition of EQPR holders beyond the academic sector. 

Results achieved

The project will contribute to improving the capacity of public administration bodies to process applications for recognising refugees’ qualifications and to increasing pathways for refugees in regulated professions. 

Its expected impact is a better and faster socio-economic inclusion of refugees from Ukraine in the Italian labour market at an adequate level of skills and qualifications. Improving the system is expected to benefit the labour market inclusion of other categories of skilled and qualified refugees as well. 

More about the project

More information on the website of the Council of Europe.