About the Lisbon recognition convention and the ENIC-NARIC network
The Lisbon Recognition Convention (LRC)
Holders of a qualification from a country that signed The Lisbon Recognition Convention (Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region) should have access to an assessment of the qualification in another country in a fair, flexible, and transparent way.
This means that the ratifying states must recognise each other’s qualifications, in order for people to find work or study more easily in a country other than the one in which they were educated.
The convention was developed by the Council of Europe and UNESCO in 1997. Since then, it has been signed and ratified by 57 countries in Europe as well as by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. Sweden signed the convention in 2001.
Key principles of the Lisbon Recognition Convention include transparency of recognition decisions, and provision of reliable information on recognition procedures and criteria.
Some of the main points of the LRC-convention
- If you are a holder of qualifications from a signatory country you should have adequate access to an assessment of these qualifications in another country.
- Each country shall recognise qualifications as similar to the corresponding qualifications in their own system, unless there is a substantial difference between the foreign qualification and the one for which recognition is sought.
The principles of mutual recognition of higher education are now incorporated in the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance. See the Higher Education Ordinance, Chapter 6, Section 6.
More information
You can read the full text of the Lisbon Recognition Convention and see which countries it covers on the Council of Europe's website.
ENIC-NARIC
Every signatory country has an information centre that provides information about qualifications recognition for academic and professional purposes. You can also find information about the countries systems of education in the centres.
The centres are organised in two networks:
- ENIC (European Network of Information Centres) are centres within the Council of Europe and UNESCO and
- NARIC (National Academic Recognition Information Centre) are centres within the EU.
The Department of Qualifications Recognition at UHR is Sweden’s ENIC-NARIC centre. Our tasks include providing information about recognition and which organisation to contact if you wish to work in a regulated profession.
Projects for development
ENICs and NARICs have during years developed projects, tools and instruments to facilitate recognition, foster mobility and enhance internationalisation of higher education. The projects contribute to the harmonization of the entire recognition work in Europe. ENIC-NARIC Sweden has participated as a partner in several projects.
Ongoing projects 2023 where ENIC-NARIC Sweden is a partner
FraudScan+ False Records, Altered Diploma and Diploma Mills Qualifications Collection
This project develops administrative support that will make it easier for falsified educational documents to be detected in time, including development of online tools which improve the efficiency and consistency of data and information sharing. The project also works to make students aware of counterfeiting problems.
Partners in this project are the ENIC-NARIC centres in Netherlands (coordinator), Italy, France, Germany, Ireland and Sweden.
The FraudScan+ project website
BRAVO, Bridging a European Network for Recognition of Vocational Qualifications (EQF 4 and 5)
The project aims to extend the role of the NARIC network to a functioning network for recognition of vocational qualifications, in order to facilitate easier mobility of vocational qualifications in Europe, and to help to meet the needs of the labor market.
Partners in this project are the NARIC centres in Norway (coordinator), Lithuania and Sweden.
The BRAVO project, on the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills website
AR25 Implementation of Automatic Recognition
The project will promote and implement the Council Recommendation on promoting automatic mutual recognition of higher education and upper secondary education and training qualifications and the outcomes of learning periods abroad. AR25 aims to support the recognition of learning periods of upper secondary education through mapping national agreements on recognition. Moreover, the project intends to consolidate skills between institutions in the field of micro-credential evaluation.
Partners in this up-coming project are the ENIC-NARIC centres in Netherlands (coordinator), Ukraine, Flanders, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, Austria, Italy, France, Estonia and Sweden.
ENJM 2023 ENIC-NARIC Joint Meeting 2023
The annual meeting of the two networks ENIC and NARIC will be hosted by ENIC-NARIC Sweden in Stockholm 11-13 June.
Digilink Advancing digital solutions in recognition data sharing
The project will support the ENIC-NARIC networks in developing digitisation strategies for sharing recognition information. The project aims to identify the minimum semantic and technical requirements for recognition certificates of ENIC-NARIC centres and collect them for the creation of a standardised European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDC). The results will be presented in a practical guide for networks.
DigiLink also aims to identify opportunities for integration between the information systems of ENIC-NARIC centres and their respective admission procedures for secondary education.
Partners in this project are the ENIC-NARIC centres in Netherlands (coordinator) Italy, France, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Canada, Norway and Sweden.