For many decades the vocational education and training sector has profoundly evolved. Research-based scenarios on its past and further development oscilliate its anchoring between educational system and labour market and requirements(Cedefop 2023; Mottweiler; Le Mouillour, Annen 2022). At the crossroads of both perspectives lie qualifications and skills. Individual learning paths and professional careers are less and less linear, and digital, energy and environmental transformations are calling for greater efforts in terms of training and its flexibility. Those arguments and furthermore are mirrored in the European VET policy. The increase in the number of decisions and agreements reached at European level since the Treaty of Rome and the development of European instruments for vocational education and training (European Qualifications Framework, ESCO classification, recommendation on micro-certifications, to name but three) are all signs of change.

This on-going research work sets out to trace how European decisions, recommendations and declarations have shaped the understanding of qualifications at European level, to the point of making them an almost marginal element in favour of a European discourse moving from competences to skills. The European discourse on qualifications has shifted over the course of European programmes, European agendas (Education and Training 2010, Education and Training 2020, Education and Training 2030) and recommendations from the sphere of governance by the national or regional competent authorities to the individualisation and flexibilisation of pathways, methods of acquiring skills and qualifications. At the level of Member States their initiating power illustrated with the declarations issued during the respective Council Presidency testifies the shif: While lifelong learning in the Copenhagen Declaration (2002) was focusing on the removal of systemic barriers in the vocational education and training systems of the Member States. The Bruges Communiqué (2010) calls for the learners to be able to transfer their learning outcomes (and no longer their qualifications). The 2020 Osnabrück Declaration focuses on individuals and organisations. The European strategic frame set up with the Barcelona European Council, back in 2002, also acknowledges the shift and pushes it further. The 2009 strategic framework for European cooperation in education and Training (council 2009) focuses on qualifications, meanwhile the newest strategic framework for European cooperation in VET « Education and Training 2030 » (council 2021) barely mentions qualifications, employability and personal development are at the forefront of the European agenda. It therefore seems legitimate to open up the debate on the issues associated with qualifications and skills, an aspect that has so far received very little attention.

Using a discursive institutionalism approach (Schmidt 2010) as an analysis frame, the paper traces and identifies the evolution of ideas and discourses at the macro-policy level of the European level. It examines how the discourse has shifted from qualifications to skills and which challenges are arising. The challenges will be further analysed and exemplified in the context of two systems of vocational education and training (Germany, France) and their policy in-take of the European initiative on micro-credentials. Both systems are enshrined in different traditions in terms of governance and understanding of education and training (Rözer/van de Werfhorst 2020; Pilz 2016; Möbius/Verdier 1997).

Methodologically, this paper is based on two different methods of analysis: firstly, a document analyses of documents published by the European Commission, the Council and the European agency for VET (decisions, resolutions, communications, recommendations) which form the macro-policy framework and those defining the instruments. Secondly, documents by national VET stakeholders issued either during European consultation processes or issued as opinion are evaluated.

The lifelong learning approach is not new to the discourse on VET, but it is undergoing a revival in the European context, particularly to meet the challenges of digital, technological and environmental change. VET is thus faced with expectations in terms of ambivalent functionality between flexibility and stability, qualifications between legitimacy and legibility. Since the 1970s, education policies and, by the same token, vocational training have been seen as an instrument of economic development at both national and European level, if we recall the Lisbon Declaration (2000). It would seem, then, that qualifications linked to regulated professions appear to be anachronistic in a new world in constant need of adaptation. Private certification providers, particularly in CVET, would be able to offer alternative, often digital, qualifications that meet immediate economic needs. The European discourse has moved on from the transparency of qualifications, to the transparency of learning outcomes, to the transparency of competences and, more recently, to the transparency of skills, to a degree of disaggregation that seems difficult to reconcile with the functions of qualifications. It may seem surprising that the European Union refer to the learning outcomes approach while overlooking the concept of qualifications. This might be explained partly by the legal limitations on the European Union's action in the field of vocational training and partly by the regulatory nature of qualifications. Until now, education and training systems, as well as their content and adjustment, have remained under the authority of national states. However, collective decisions taken at European level are becoming increasingly important. A new aspect completes this picture. The range of training courses on offer is being digitised, and instruments such as ESCO, Europass and micro-certifications are being driven by the need to be interoperable and digital.

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