DQF / Skillman.eu promotes Europass, ECVET, EQF, and other frameworks that standardise skill qualifications across Europe, ensuring consistency, transparency, and recognition of competencies.
When a data reader encounters a badge issued under these recognised frameworks, it can confidently guarantee a verified level of competency.

Building on this foundation, the integration of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) further enhances trust and security, enabling decentralised verification and empowering individuals to take ownership of their credentials. This combination adds significant value to the data reader system, solidifying its role as a trusted source of verified skills and qualifications across borders.

The EU developed the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) as a translation tool to make national qualifications easier to understand and more comparable. The EQF seeks to support cross-border mobility of learners and workers, promote lifelong learning and professional development across Europe.

The EQF is an 8-level, learning outcomes-based framework for all types of qualifications that serves as a translation tool between different national qualifications frameworks. This framework helps improve transparency, comparability and portability of people’s qualifications and makes it possible to compare qualifications from different countries and institutions.

The EQF covers all types and all levels of qualifications and the use of learning outcomes makes it clear what a person knows, understands and is able to do. The level increases according to the level of proficiency, level 1 is the lowest and 8 the highest level. Most importantly the EQF is closely linked to national qualifications frameworks, this way it can provide a comprehensive map of all types and levels of qualifications in Europe, which are increasingly accessible through qualification databases.

The EQF was set up in 2008 and later revised in 2017. Its revision has kept the core objectives of creating transparency and mutual trust in the landscape of qualifications in Europe. Member States committed themselves to further develop the EQF and make it more effective in facilitating the understanding of national, international and third-country qualifications by employers, workers and learners.

European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and the European Training Foundation (ETF), as European Agencies, play an important role in supporting the implementation of the EQF. 

The ENIC/NARIC network is a network of national centres set up to directly support institutions and citizens with the recognition of academic qualifications.

ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the European multilingual classification of Skills, Competences and Occupations.  

ESCO works as a dictionary, describing, identifying and classifying professional occupations and skills relevant for the EU labour market and education and training.  Those concepts and the relationships between them can be understood by electronic systems, which allows different online platforms to use ESCO for services like matching jobseekers to jobs on the basis of their skills, suggesting trainings to people who want to reskill or upskill etc.

ESCO provides descriptions of occupations and skills linked to these occupations, translated into all official EU languages plus Icelandic, Norwegian, Ukrainian, and Arabic.

The aim of ESCO is to support job mobility across Europe and therefore a more integrated and efficient labour market, by offering a “common language” on occupations and skills that can be used by different stakeholders on employment and education and training topics. 

ESCO is available in an online portal and can be consulted free of charge. It can be downloaded or retrieved through the ESCO API.

The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) is a pioneering initiative launched by the European Commission in collaboration with the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP). Established in 2018, EBSI is the first pan-European, public-driven blockchain infrastructure to support secure and trusted digital services. Built on blockchain technology's decentralised, immutable, and tamper-proof properties, EBSI enables the seamless verification and exchange of information across borders, benefitting citizens, institutions, and public administrations.

Within the DQF.eu framework, EBSI plays a critical role in implementing a new credential paradigm based on trust and decentralisation. DQF credentials utilise the EBSI Verifiable Credentials Framework, adhering to the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard, which ensures that credentials issued are impossible to falsify and easy to verify. By leveraging EBSI’s digital wallets and blockchain network, DQF enables learners to securely store, share, and verify their credentials decentralised. This transition moves credentials from institutional ownership to individual control, empowering learners with ownership of their records while maintaining trust and interoperability across Europe.

Through its integration with EBSI, DQF.eu provides a concrete solution to modernising credential management, aligning with European efforts to promote transparency, security, and cross-border recognition of qualifications.