The „Kick-off Meeting“ on 29/10/2014 and 30/10/2014 that took place in Lengen-feld, was the start of a new EU-funded transnational project in the framework of the ERASMUS+ program, Keyaction 2 strategic partnerships.

The objective of the project is the development, testing and implementation of a Europe-wide standardized type of further education for competence balance coun-sellors, according to the French model „bilan de compétence“. This is intended to ensure a nearly uniform quality of the competence balance (BdC), according to the aforesaid model.

Partners from France, Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are in-volved. For the most part, those partners have long-time experience in realizing the BdC. They are members of the FECBOP (European Federation of Centres of Ca-reer Guidance and Bilan de Compétences et d’orientation professionelle) and as such, they work according to the European quality standards, or are certified ac-cording to those standards.

The new project shall be subject to continual testing of the existing “institutional quality criteria”; furthermore, some additional educational content shall be devel-oped for the “certified competence balance counsellors“. While doing so, addressing the BdC process to the needs and requirements of the European labour market and taking into account the changes of the labour market itself are being prioritised. On the other hand, there is the aspect of pedagogy, concerning the development of autonomy of the respective person, who is in need of a competence balance coun-sellor. This person gets qualification skills for self-planning and self-creating of his/her own occupational career.

Next project steps will be the adaptation of the quality criteria, the development of further education and of its testing and implementation in the European frame-work.

The next partner meeting is planned for January 2015 in France.