The latest developments are the result of the conclusions of a study carried out by EUROsociAL+, which was presented at an event with participation from the authorities of the Alliance countries and the European Union, the result of the work of a team of experts from the Social Policies Area of EUROsociAL+ in IILA and of the Network of Experts from the Alliance’s Technical Labour Group.
Equipo de trabajo en Colombia. Foto: Manuel de la Fuente.
In the final declaration of the Pacific Alliance Summit, the presidents of the Republics of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru urged for work to continue in making the standardisation system for professional skills operational among the 4 countries. On this point, the certification of labour skills, Annex II of the Declaration of Santiago mandates the Alliance’s Technical Labour Group to “work closely with national labour skill certification institutions in defining the operating system for the standardisation of certifications granted based on the conclusions of the comparative study developed during the Lima mandate”. The comparative study of the skill certification systems for the 4 countries carried out with the support of EUROsociAL+ constitutes a milestone in this process.
This study is the result of work by an expert team from the EUROSociAL+ programme and the Network of Experts from the Alliance’s Technical Labour Group, comprising representatives from the National Council for Skills Standardisation and Certification of Mexico, CONOCER; the National Learning Service of Colombia, SENA; the Ministry of Labour and Employment Promotion of Peru; and the Commission of the National System of Certification of Labour Skills of Chile, Chile Valora.
The document was prepared based on a previous presidential mandate (Declaration of Lima, 6 July 2019) that established the need to “prepare a comparative report on the systems of evaluation and certification of labour skills in the Pacific Alliance countries, as a first step towards the creation of a roadmap that enables the standardisation of certification systems”. The development of this initiative contributes to one of the Alliance’s main objectives, to achieve the free movement of people, as established in Article 3 of its Framework Agreement: “to build an area of deep integration in a participatory and consensual manner to progressively advance towards the free movement of goods, services, capital and people”.
The participation of EUROsociAL+ in this major initiative contributes to strengthening the Pacific Alliance’s partnership with the European Union on an issue that is also part of the founding principles of the EU; the latter has made significant progress in facilitating regional labour mobility thanks to the creation of instruments such as the European Qualifications Framework, which classifies skills, qualifications and occupations (ESCO) and the European network for employment services cooperation (EURES), designed to facilitate the free movement of workers. An issue that is even more relevant for the European Union and Latin America today, when the recognition and certification of labour skills is considered one of the most effective tools for the inclusion of the migrant population in destination countries.
