The European Commission has launched the new ‘EU Skills Profile Tool for Third-Country Nationals’, with the aim of facilitating integration and pathways to work. On the occasion of the United Nations’ world refugee day, the European Commission presented the new tool, which is an off-and online web editor to support non-EU nationals in communicating their qualifications and experiences to potential employers and education and training providers across the Union. With the launch of the 'EU Skills Profile Tool' the Commission is delivering on one of the ten Key Actions announced in the New Skills Agenda for Europe,  by addressing mismatches between skills and jobs and making better use of existing skills in Europe. As an instrument for reception centres, integration and public employment services, NGO’s and education and training advisers, the multilingual tool is to speed up and simplify the recognition of skills. It will also support matchmaking of jobseekers to vacancies, assist in understanding individuals’ up-skilling needs, and form a basis for offering guidance into education and training.

This new initiative complements other transparency tools that support comparability of qualifications across the EU and internationally, including the Europass and the European Qualifications Framework, that are both currently being revised under the New Skills Agenda.   Moreover the Skills Profile Tool is also coherent with the To develop a tool that offers a response across member states on key challenges faced in gaining a clear overview of the qualifications of both high- and low skilled newly-arrived third country nationals, a comprehensive survey on the content of the tool, as well as consultation on a demo version was carried out by the Commission. The tool focuses on enabling the mapping of skills and experiences, to produce a profile much like a CV, and alleviates language barriers by making it possible to display in parallel two languages on screen. The Skills Profile Tool will be available free of change in all EU, EEA languages and a selection of languages based on those countries of origin from which the EU received the highest number of asylum seekers - namely Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Sorani, Somali and Tigrinya.

European Commission – Press release