The Ninth Meeting of the Lisbon Recognition Convention Committee was held on 15 November 2022 in Strasbourg. Together with this meeting, the Lisbon Recognition Convention celebrates 25th anniversary of its signing so a small ceremony was held after the meeting.
The first key topic of the meeting was dedicated to 2nd Monitoring Report on the Implementation of the Lisbon Recognition Convention, focusing on the right to appeal, information provision, transnational education, automatic recognition and digital solutions, which will be published shortly. There are still two countries, Monaco and Greece which haven't ratified Lisbon Recognition Convention so that they are not obliged to implement its provision. Moreover, The Report has shown that different approaches to the implementation of the Lisbon Recognition Convention still exist in countries that ratified the Convention.
Priorities for the ENIC/NARIC networks in the period 2023-2025 were also presented, and a very ambitious plan to prepare and adopt four additional subsidiary texts of the Lisbon Recognition Convention was presented. These subsidiary texts are related to automatic recognition, fraudulent documents, transnational education, and digital solutions.
The Global Convention and the current state of play were discussed. It was pointed out that 18 countries already ratified it so for its entrance into force two additional countries remain to ratify it.
The Committee also adopted the terms of reference of the Working Group on the revision of the "Joint ENIC/NARIC Charter of activities and services".
Within the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees (EQPR) project, on 16 November 2022 in Strasbourg, the representative of the Centre for information and Recognition of Qualifications attended the 10th meeting of the Project Coordination Group.
It was pointed out that the main results of the project were also a part of the presentation made during the meeting of the Lisbon Recognition Convention Committee on 15 November 2022. 20 countries are now part of the project and together with the Council of Europe they continue to work towards expanding the number of partners. Different initiatives related to the EQPR project have been conducted including setting up a working group with the mandate to draft a new subsidiary text aiming to promote measures that facilitate the introduction and use of the EQPR in all member states. The Council of Europe will also be working on setting up a small grants scheme for ENIC centres to further build bridges and continue promoting their work and the EQPR among other topics. In the coming period the Council of Europe will focus on developing a new legal instrument dedicated to the use of the EQPR in Council of Europe Member States and providing guidance to national authorities in view of specific actions for recognition of refugees’ qualifications and capacity building.
