ESCO and EASEC: How Europe's Skills Classification Aligns with Competency Certification
About this framework
ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the European Commission's multilingual classification that identifies and categorises skills, competences, qualifications and occupations relevant to the EU labour market and education. Available in 28 languages, ESCO provides the common vocabulary that connects employment services, education providers, employers and policymakers across Europe.
Why ESCO Matters
ESCO is the reference language for the European labour market. Developed and maintained by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL), it serves as the dictionary that allows different countries, institutions and systems to describe occupations and skills using a shared vocabulary.
The classification currently includes approximately 3,039 occupation concepts and 13,900 skill and competence concepts, organised hierarchically and linked to one another through a detailed ontology. Each concept carries a persistent URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), making it machine-readable and interoperable with digital platforms, job portals, learning management systems and credential infrastructures.
ESCO directly underpins several flagship EU initiatives. It powers the automated skills-based matching on EURES, the European job mobility portal. It provides the skills vocabulary used by Europass, including the European Digital Credentials for Learning. And it supports the data analysis behind Cedefop's Skills-OVATE tool, which tracks skills demand from online job vacancies across Europe in real time.
In a labour market increasingly shaped by the green and digital transitions, ESCO provides the structured, evidence-based framework that organisations need to define, communicate and verify competencies across borders.
How ESCO Works
ESCO is built on two operational pillars and one linking mechanism:
The Occupations Pillar
Occupationsorganises approximately 3,039 occupation concepts using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) maintained by the International Labour Organization as its hierarchical backbone. ISCO-08 provides the first four levels; ESCO extends the hierarchy to level five and beyond. Each occupation is mapped to exactly one ISCO-08 code and contains an occupational profile listing the knowledge, skills and competences that experts have identified as relevant.
The Skills and Competences Pillar
Skills & Competencesprovides a comprehensive list of knowledge, skills and competences relevant to the European labour market. In the current version (v1.2.1, updated December 2025), this pillar is structured into four sub-classifications: knowledge concepts, skill and competence concepts, transversal skills and competences, and language skills. Each concept includes a preferred term, alternative labels, a description, a reusability level indicator, and relationships with other concepts and occupations.
The Qualifications Pillar
Qualificationsconnects national qualifications databases with ESCO occupations and skills through the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), enabling cross-border recognition and comparability.
Every ESCO concept is classified by its reusability level — transversal (applicable across all occupations and sectors), cross-sector (applicable to occupations across several economic sectors), or sector-specific (applicable to occupations within one sector). This distinction is fundamental for understanding which skills transfer between roles and which are domain-bound.
ESCO's complete dataset is freely available for download in CSV, JSON-LD, RDF, TTL and XML formats, and accessible through a public REST API. It is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).
Who Uses ESCO
By 2022, 113 organisations had formally reported their use of ESCO to the European Commission, with the actual number of users significantly higher as many organisations download and implement ESCO without formal notification.
Public Employment Services
Public Servicesacross Europe use ESCO to standardise occupational descriptions and improve job matching. EURES, the European Employment Services network, relies on ESCO for automated skills-based matching across all EU Member States.
Education and training institutions
Educationuse ESCO to align programme outcomes with labour market language, ensuring that graduates' competencies are described in terms that employers and employment services recognise.
Job platforms and HR technology providers
Technologyintegrate ESCO into their ontologies for skills matching, talent management and workforce analytics. Internationally, stakeholders increasingly consider ESCO alongside the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET as the standard framework for occupations and skills.
Researchers and policymakers
Research & Policyuse ESCO for labour market analysis, skills forecasting and the design of education and employment policies. ESCO data feeds into tools such as Cedefop's Skills-OVATE and the European Skills Intelligence Observatory.
The European Commission
EU Institutionuses ESCO across multiple directorates and agencies, including Europass, EURES, Cedefop and the European Training Foundation (ETF).
How EASEC Aligns with ESCO
EASEC uses ESCO as the reference taxonomy for classifying the transversal competencies it certifies, ensuring that every EASEC certification speaks the same language as Europe's labour market infrastructure. This alignment operates at three levels:
Vocabulary Alignment
Each of the 32 transversal competencies that EASEC evaluates and certifies has been mapped against the corresponding concept in ESCO's skills and competences pillar. When EASEC certifies a professional in "Problem Solving," "Leadership," "Collaboration and Teamwork," or any other transversal competence, that competence is defined using terminology that corresponds to ESCO's classification structure.
This means that an EASEC-certified competence is immediately legible to any system, platform or institution that uses ESCO as its reference vocabulary — from public employment services to HR technology platforms to Europass itself.
Metadata Interoperability
EASEC credentials include ESCO references in their digital metadata. When an EASEC certification is issued as a European Digital Credential (EDC) or an Open Badge 3.0, the credential's metadata contains the corresponding ESCO skill URI, making it machine-readable and automatically processable by any ESCO-compatible system.
This technical interoperability ensures that EASEC certifications are not isolated documents but connected data points within the broader European skills ecosystem. An employer, university or public employment service that processes ESCO-aligned credentials can immediately contextualise what an EASEC certification represents.
Assessment Against a Common Standard
EASEC's psychometric instruments — which use forced-choice and situational judgement test formats validated to 98% reliability under European standards — evaluate competencies that are defined in reference to ESCO's transversal skills framework. This ensures that the assessment process itself is grounded in the same competence definitions that the European Commission has established as the common language for the EU labour market.
When EASEC certifies that a professional demonstrates "Critical Thinking" at a specific proficiency level, that statement is anchored to a recognised European standard, not a proprietary definition.
What This Means for You
For Employers
When you receive an EASEC certification from a candidate or employee, the competencies described in that credential are classified using the same ESCO vocabulary that powers EU employment services and HR technology platforms. This means you can directly compare EASEC-certified competencies with the skills requirements in your job descriptions if they follow ESCO standards, reducing ambiguity in hiring and development decisions.
For Education Institutions
Universities, business schools and training providers that align their programmes with ESCO can recognise EASEC certifications as complementary evidence of transversal competence development. Because EASEC credentials reference ESCO URIs, they integrate naturally into programme accreditation processes, graduate employability reporting and Europass-compatible credential ecosystems.
For Individuals
An EASEC certification linked to ESCO means your verified competencies are described in a language that is recognised across 28 European languages and used by employment services, job platforms and educational institutions throughout Europe. Your credential is not a standalone certificate — it is a data point in the European skills infrastructure, stored in your Europass wallet and verifiable by any employer or institution.
Frequently Asked Questions About ESCO
Certify the Competencies That Matter Most
The World Economic Forum identifies the skills. EASEC verifies them. Explore how EASEC's psychometric assessments and internationally recognised certifications can help your organisation, institution or career align with the skills priorities shaping the global labour market.
Related Frameworks
Discover how EASEC aligns with other international standards:
European Qualifications Framework (EQF) →
How EASEC certifications are levelled against the 8-level European standard
O*NET →
How EASEC maps competencies to the U.S. occupational information network
Europass Digital Credentials →
How EASEC issues verifiable credentials on the European Digital Credentials infrastructure