The Steering Committee for Education (CDEDU) of the Council of Europe has decided to launch the formal drafting process of a new Convention, provisionally titled the Convention on the Conditions of Transparency  and Quality Assurance for Automatic Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications.  Its primary aim is to establish the enabling conditions and obligations that will make automatic recognition feasible across the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).

Unlike existing recommendations and non-binding instruments, this Convention will create legal certainty by requiring States Parties to implement key Bologna Process tools such as national qualifications frameworks, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), the Diploma Supplement, and robust quality assurance mechanisms aligned with European Standards and Guidelines.

The CDEDU emphasised that the new Convention will promote the right to qualifications holders for automatic recognition  and will lay down the essential foundations of transparency, trust, and quality upon which mutual automatic recognition can be built. This represents a major step forward in overcoming persistent barriers caused by a lack of mutual trust in the quality of higher education systems and enhance the implementation of the Bologna Process tools.

The Committee also approved the establishment of a Committee of Experts on Automatic Recognition of Qualifications (CE-AR) to prepare the draft text in 2026, with broad participation from interested countries.

This initiative reinforces  the Lisbon Recognition Convention and commitments made at successive EHEA Ministerial Conferences, as well as the 2018 EU Council Recommendation on promoting automatic recognition.