European Trade Union Committee for Education

ETUCE has participated to the public consultation of the Directorate-General of Migration of the European Commission on “Legal migration by non-EU citizens”. Indeed, ETUCE submitted a position paper which has been published by DG HOME.

Among various aspects, the ETUCE position paper underlined the importance of professional training for staff to enable them to teach in multicultural environments; the need for more EU action on assessing and recognising foreign academic qualifications from outside of the EU; allowing non-EU students and researchers to travel, work and study in other EU Member States once admitted in one Member State and the potential harmful effects of a single and uniform model being imposed on Member States due to national differences in education and migration policies.

Whilst not all of these points are mentioned in the consultation report, the recognition of qualifications is mentioned multiple times. The report states that “the difficulty to assess foreign qualifications is one of the main reasons that many employers do not hire non-EU nationals. The recognition of foreign qualifications is also highlighted as being an area where the least amount of respondents (31%) agree that there is equal treatment. There is also broad support for EU-level action to facilitate the assessment and recognition of foreign academic qualifications (58%)”.

The report also indicates strong support for ETUCE’s proposal to allow non-EU nationals to travel, work and study in other EU Member States, with “(53%) agreed that non-EU workers should be able to travel and work in different EU countries once admitted in one country”.

Whilst ETUCE welcomes the integration of some of our recommendations into the final consultation report, it is important to recall that teachers and other education personnel play a key role in future discussions on the legal migration of non-EU nationals, particularly when the discussion concerns migrant teachers, student teachers, academics and researchers. Noteworthy is also the importance of increasing teachers´ and student teachers' learning mobility as well as the need for new options on financing mobility programmes, exchanges, study visits and lifelong learning opportunities in general, as stated in the ETUCE statement on the promotion of mobility of young people.