History

There have been considerable changes in the content and manner of delivery of psychological services in Europe over the past few decades. From the early years on psychologists have been educated and have been applying their knowledge in nationally defined frameworks, characterized by distinct educational traditions, forms of employment, types of government involvement, and languages. Having its roots in philosophy and medicine and developing under widely different political and economic conditions, the education of psychologists has taken on different forms in different countries, in some cases with an emphasis on long and uniform training, public funding and regulation by law, in other cases with an emphasis on early differentiation and market-based competition with other professions. Over this period there has been a substantial enhancement of the quality of education and of professional services, and a growth in the extent of legal regulation of psychologists across Europe.

The growing internationalization of the economy in general and the implementation of a common internal market within the European Union (EU) have stimulated the mobility of professionals as well as the delivery of services across national borders. Major steps have also been taken with regard to educational mobility, especially at the academic level. As a consequence of the Bologna Declaration of 1999, a total overhaul of the system of university education across Europe took place with the establishment of the European Higher Education Area by the Budapest-Vienna Declaration of March 2010. The agenda of the European Commission aims at further advances in the same direction. Thus, the Commission has achieved a radical revision of the system of recognition of professional qualifications, which has been accepted by the European Parliament and the European Council, in order to promote the free movement of professionals across Europe.

After 20 years the General Directive 89/48/EC that provided the framework for professions which are regulated by law (apart from the seven professions with so-called vertical or ‘special’ Directives), was replaced by a new Directive 2005/36/EC, adopted in September 2005. These developments are of obvious relevance for psychologists and their clients. Psychologists, like other professionals, should have the opportunity to obtain their education and practise their profession anywhere in the EU. Clients, be they individual citizens or institutions, should be able to obtain services of competent psychologists according to their interests and rights in any place within the EU.

Although uniformity, transparency and flexibility should be aimed for when moving towards educational and professional systems which transcend national boundaries, these aims are not easily achieved, considering the diversity in systems and practices that have developed over time. Common frameworks must be found to compare and establish the equivalence of professional and educational qualifications, and common standards must be set to guarantee levels of expertise and professional quality throughout the EU. This poses a great challenge since it requires existing systems and practices to change, and the interests vested in them to be surmounted. It is particularly exigent for professional communities to avoid defensiveness and undue protection of national interests, and to define a common view of the future of the profession, including the development, education and training of its members.

In psychology, a number of efforts to establish a framework and standards across Europe have been made over the last decades. Thus, in 1990 the European Federation of Professional Psychologists Associations (EFPPA) adopted a set of Optimal Standards for the Profession of Psychology (EFPPA 1990) in which requirements were laid down for the academic education and the professional training of psychologists. The European Network of Organizational and Work Psychologists (ENOP), on the basis of a Copernicus-grant from the European Commission, elaborated a curriculum framework and minimum standards for work and organizational psychology (Roe et al., 1994; ENOP, 1998). A working group of European psychologists followed a similar approach when defining a framework for education and training for European psychologists in the context of the EU Leonardo da Vinci program (Lunt, 2000; Lunt et al. 2001a, Lunt 2002). The resulting document, entitled 'EuroPsyT, A framework for education and training for Psychologists in Europe' was widely discussed by associations and communities of psychologists throughout Europe and adopted by the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA, the successor of EFPPA) in 2001. The EuroPsyT framework constitutes the basis for further developments which  two-level system, which will encompass the EuroPsy European Certificate in Psychology as the basic standard for independent practice in psychology, and a number of advanced or specialist certificates in psychology which build on this. Regarding the Specialist Certificate in Work and Organisational Psychology:  A substantive role was played by the European Association of Work and Organisational Psychologists (EAWOP), starting in 2006 as a joint institutional initiative up to 2023, in the design, development, piloting, and implementation of the Specialist Certificate in Work and Organisational Psychology.  (2025 update:  )The collaboration continued with EAWOP representation in the development of the competences for this Specialist Standard and Certificate during 2024/2025. 

The EuroPsy framework drew substantially on work carried out by the British Psychological Society (BPS) in developing its own occupational standards for psychologists which has resulted in Standards of Proficiency for Applied Psychology. A major contribution of this work is the development of competences which can be evaluated as outcomes of education and training, rather than reliance only on academic curricula.

The European Commission is also in favour of a ‘competence’ approach, which emphasises transparency and which enables competence evaluation across a range of contexts. This may be seen in the so-called “Tuning” project (Tuning Educational Structures in Europe), part of the implementation of the Bologna Declaration, which aims to develop a set of generic and specific competences leading to learning outcomes in different fields.  The “Tuning” project began in 2000 as a project to link the political objectives of the Bologna Process and the initiatives of the Lisbon Recognition Convention. Its first phase covered a range of areas, though not psychology; in the second phase psychology has been developed by a small group who were also involved in the development of the EuroPsy (Lunt et al 2011). At the present time, the equivalence of academic qualifications is evaluated by National Academic Recognition Information Centres (NARIC) at the national level working within the European Network of Information Centres (ENIC) at European level. It is hoped that the combination of curriculum specification with a specification of competences of professional psychologists, as presented in EuroPsy, will enable more transparent evaluation of equivalence and higher quality of professional services to clients.

In the early days of the European Community, the Treaty of Rome in 1957 promoted freedom of movement of professionals across Europe; ‘freedom to work anywhere in the European Community is one of the basic rights laid down by the Treaty of Rome’; Article 48 of the Rome Treaty provided for the free movement of labour and Article 57 allowed for mutual recognition and co-ordination of professional qualifications. However, implementation of this commitment was slow and difficult.

Early on, there were attempts to harmonise qualifications across member countries and so-called Sectoral Directives were agreed for the seven professions of doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, veterinarians, pharmacists and architects, with agreement across all the member countries on the harmonisation or standardisation of education and training. However, it soon became clear that these attempts to harmonise qualifications were enormously complex and time-consuming, and the task of extending this process to other professions appeared impossible. 

Therefore in 1985 the Commission introduced a new approach to cover other professions to which access is in some way restricted (or regulated) by the State either by law or through a professional organisation and which require at least three years’ university level training or equivalent (the General Directive 89/48/EC, entitled Mutual Recognition of Higher Education Diplomas, and more recently the second General Directive 92/51). Psychologists were covered by the directives 89/48 and 92/51, i.e. general or horizontal directives which covered all regulated professions whose qualifications require at least a Diploma (Lunt 1997).

Although these Directives were intended to facilitate mobility of professionals, there was limited progress in using them to promote mobility of psychologists across Europe, since each country was able to impose its own requirements on psychologists seeking to enter the country with qualifications obtained in another country. The General Directive provided a complicated approach to the evaluation of equivalence which depended on individual cases being evaluated and compared against a national ‘template’.

The European Federation of Psychologists Associations (EFPA), previously named the European Federation of Professional Psychologists Associations (EFPPA), agreed a statement in 1990 on ‘Optimum standards for the professional training in psychology (EFPPA 1990) which provided a very general framework for the level of qualifications for psychologists, and which established the requirement of six years of education and training for professional psychologists.

This framework has succeeded in supporting some countries in developing their own framework and requirements for psychologists’ education.

Recent years have seen a growth in the number of countries in Europe which have legal regulation or laws determining the requirements for the title of ‘psychologist’,  while some countries impose requirements and constraints over activities for which a psychologist qualification may be required. There are now Regulations or laws for psychologists in the vast majority of EU countries, and in an increasing number of other European countries. The remainder of EU countries are moving towards some form of regulation, and the trend is for countries to develop a system of national regulation, frequently as part of wider professional regulation in the country.

Different countries in Europe have very different traditions and modes of regulating professional practice. EFPA takes an active interest in these developments. Although there is no regulation of the profession at a European level, it will benefit both consumers and professionals if a minimum standard is agreed across Europe which will in turn influence future requirements for regulation at an individual country level.

Over the past 10 years or so a number of developments have provided a foundation for subsequent work; these have included work by the European Network of Work and Organisational Psychologists (ENOP) to develop a ‘reference model’ and minimal standards (ENOP 1998; ENOP-EAWOP 2007) and work within the British Psychological Society (BPS) to develop standards which specify competencies of psychologists at the stage of independent practice (Bartram 1996). 

Following this, in 1999, a proposal for funding was put to the EU under its Leonardo da Vinci program to develop a European Framework for Psychologists Training; this two year project ended in 2001 with the report presenting a European Framework for Psychologists Training or EuroPsyT (Lunt et al 2001). The following countries*1 took part in the project: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and gave general support to the framework, which was endorsed by the General Assembly of EFPA in July 2001.

A second project also funded by the EU under the Leonardo da Vinci programme began in November 2001; one of its main goals was to design the European Diploma in Psychology. This project coincided with developments within the EU, and changes in the Directive governing professional qualifications (see Lunt 2002), and developments within wider Europe, for example the Bologna Agreement of 1999 (see Lunt 2005). The project ended in 2005 with the report presenting EuroPsy the European Diploma in Psychology (Lunt et al 2005). The second Leonardo project had membership from the following countries*2: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK and a European federation EFPA. The outcome of project, the  European Diploma in Psychology (EuroPsy) aimed to provide a set of standards or benchmark for quality of psychology education and training across Europe.

In 1996, consultations began for a proposed “Third Directive” to replace the previous sectoral and vertical directives to facilitate free movement throughout the European Economic Area. These culminated on March 7, 2002 when the European Commission issued a Directive proposal to replace the 15 separate directives (sectoral and vertical), and to ‘clarify and simplify the rules in order to facilitate free movement of qualified people’.

This Directive was subject to consultation and debate for over two years, and was accepted in 2005 by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Although the European Commission has not pursued in detail some of the earlier clauses of the Directive, for example concerning professional ‘platforms’ it nevertheless welcomes professions themselves reaching agreement at a European level as to the standards required for the practice of a profession. There are on-going discussions concerning professional ‘cards’  which might provide evidence and an inventory of the education, training and practice of individual psychologists in the different member states in a comparable format.

These kinds of developments may in future lead to systems of quasi-automatic or fast-track recognition of qualifications provided that there is agreement within the profession itself at the European level (see Lunt 2005). In addition to contributing to a fast-track recognition mechanism, a European standard may serve to improve quality of professional training and practice, and to enhance quality in countries which are developing their own education and training routes and professional practice guidelines. It will also enable European countries to share and promote good practice, and to develop the European dimension in professional training and practice in psychology.

Almost 50 years after the Treaty of Rome, one of its goals of freedom of movement of professionals may be realisable through recent developments. At a general professional level, the “Third” Directive which simplifies procedures for recognition of qualifications aims to facilitate mobility; it was accepted in 2005 and implemented by 2007. For psychologists this period coincided with the implementation of the EuroPsy (the European Certificate in Psychology) which was finalised and handed over to EFPA in July 2005. EuroPsy will support efforts by EFPA to enhance the quality of education and training of psychologists across Europe. It will also contribute to the aspiration for client protection through high quality professional services.

This period sees the further development of the Bologna process (Lunt 2005) which will result in wide-scale reforms of university structures and systems across Europe based on its commitment to the creation of a European Higher Education Area by 2010. The acceptance of the EuroPsy by EFPA Full Member associations previously named the Member associations in July 2005 and its launch in July 2009 enables psychologists across Europe to benefit from these developments.