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A delegation with representatives of the Swedish Council for Higher Education visited the BQ-Portal on 1 February in order to get acquainted with the professional recognition in Germany. Since 2017 it is possible in Sweden to have your foreign professional credentials recognized. In Germany this legal right was introduced already in 2012. The Swedish Council for Higher Education is responsible for carrying out recognition procedures in Sweden and already uses the information available in the BQ-Portal in daily work. At the meeting, the Swedish guests learned how to find the information in the BQ-Portal, and found out, how the BQ-Team carries out research on foreign VET systems and professional profiles.
The rate of full equivalencies varies by profession. The success rate of positive recognition for the regulated professions is between 35 and 70 percent, except for the profession of general care and pediatric nurse, which has a low success rate of 24 percent. Furthermore, the proportion of decisions of full equivalence for the non-regulated occupation of cook is the highest at 86 percent. This is immediately followed by the occupations of elec-trician, industrial electrician, and metal technology specialist with over 70 percent.
In order to advise and accompany foreign experts on their way to Germany, there are numerous institutions and structures in Germany and abroad that offer support.
As in 2020, the most frequent applications come from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is fol-lowed by the Philippines, Serbia, and Syria. The positive recognition rate in 2021 for Latvia with 94 percent is the highest. It is closely followed by the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, and Hungary, which also have positive recognition rates of over at 90 percent.
As in 2021, the highest number of applications came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by the Philippines, Serbia, and Syria. The Netherlands has the highest positive recognition rate in 2022 with at 94 percent, closely followed by Latvia, as well as Hungary, Switzerland, Lithuania, Austria and the Czech Republic, which also have positive recognition rates of over 90 percent.
Most applications in 2023 come from Turkey, followed by the Philippines and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria has the highest positive recognition rate in 2023 with 96 percent, followed by Latvia with 94 percent, as well as the Netherlands, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which also have positive recognition rates of over 90 percent.
Twelve months after the BQ information portal for foreign professional qualifications first went online, the Federal Minister of Economics and Technology, Dr. Philipp Rösler, looked back on a successful year and stressed that additional support should be provided to companies wanting to have foreign qualifications recognised.
If you as a company would like to support an international candidate or employee in having their foreign qualification recognized, you may use or point them to existing offers of information and advice.
United Nations honors the BQ-Portal – the information portal for foreign professional qualifications, an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, with the United Nations Public Service Award (UNPSA) on June 26th, 2024.