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Under the motto “Discover your talent”, the European Commission encourages stakeholders from all over Europe to organise events on a local, regional or national level.

The BQ Portal was recognised as the best and most innovative performer in public administrations across Europe. On the 18th of November at the Provincial Government House in Maastricht, the BQ Portal was awarded the European Public Sector Award trophy in the European/national/regional category by the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). Some 266 projects from 36 European countries and the European institutions participated in competition. However, only three projects won the European Public Sector Award.

The new Employment Ordinance has been in force since 1 July. The list of occupations in which people with vocational training qualifications from non-EU countries can access the German labour market is now also in place. Following the "EU Blue Card" for the highly skilled, the improved recognition of foreign vocational qualifications and the relaxations in the rules for students from non-EU countries who wish to stay on to work in Germany, this is a further important step towards making it easier for workers from outside the EU to enter the German labour market and towards covering the skills gap in the German economy via migration.

The first day of the European Validation Festival - Unlocking talents in Europe, on 14 June in Brussels, featured a marketplace with 40 stands where organisations had the opportunity to present their initiatives and practices on validation of informal and non-formal learning. The experts from all around Europe shared practices and exchanged ideas and knowledge about how the work experience of job applicants who move from one country to another can be recorded faster and more transparently. The participants agreed that there is a lot to learn from each other. After all, there are many initiatives and best practice projects in Europe dedicated to this topic.

In recognition of its brilliant public achievements, the BQ-Portal gets into the final for the European Public Sector Award. The European Public Sector Award (EPSA) was launched to identify particularly innovative and successful projects. This award is aimed to encourage administrative agencies throughout Europe to learn from the best practices of others and to modernize their structures.

The 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO congratulates Germany for its policies in recognizing migrants and refugees’ prior qualifications and skills. The recognition of foreign professional qualifications increases the probability of immigrant employment by 45 percentage points and the hourly wage by 40%. A million migrants a year visit the website ‘Recognition in Germany’, which offers advice on the recognition procedure in 9 languages. The information on foreign vocational training systems and professional qualifications in the BQ-Portal is accessed annually by over 180,000 website visitors, primarily assessment authorities, companies and experts.

On 1 October 2019 a new funding directive for the recognition of foreign professional qualifications comes into force. It expands the funding opportunities. In future, it will also be possible to get funding for certificate evaluations from the Central Office for Foreign Education (ZAB).

During a two-day workshop “Migration and Skills: Successful Labour Market Integration through Professional Recognition Systems”, the organisations involved in labour market integration of migrants from six different European countries gained valuable insights into the BQ-Portal project, a European Public Sector Award (EPSA) winner of 2015.

Taking up a German initiative, the EU SME Envoys Network has drawn up the new European Action Programme for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The European SME Action Programme was presented in Brussels to Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the Commissioner responsible for the internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs.

Following the revised EU Professional Qualifications Directive of 2013, the federal government made the application procedures for the assessment of foreign professional qualifications even simpler.