Background to the EuroPsy Project

The field of psychology is rapidly expanding across European countries, and requires comprehensive training and evaluation of skills and competence. Psychologists make important decisions that affect the lives of their clients. Fields of application include mental health, occupational fields, human factors, decision-making and accident prevention, crisis and disaster intervention, work with refugees and displaced citizens, work in schools to reduce educational and social exclusion, and in general work with some of the most vulnerable members of society. With the impact of major societal, technological and economic changes in Europe, and changes in employment, patterns of work, and the workplace, there are increasing needs for psychologists to work both at an individual client level and at an organisational level. As the complexity of human problems increases, the need for more assurance of the quality of psychologists' competence grows. In all European countries, psychologists are expanding both in number and in the range of fields of application to meet the problems of current society.

Discussions within the European Federation of Professional Psychologists' Associations (EFPPA) and the European Network of Organisational and Work Psychologists (ENOP), and at national level (in all the partner countries) have highlighted the urgent need for more effective means of mutual recognition and probable convergence of professional formation training for psychologists.

Although the First and Second general System Directives provide the requirement for mutual recognition of qualifications in order to facilitate mobility of professionals across member states, in practice this has not been easy for psychologists. Individual member states have different patterns of education, training and professional recognition, and there is a great need to develop a common framework which will facilitate recognition, and which will enable greater consistency of standards and quality across member states.

There is further a need to develop the transparency of qualifications and to develop new approaches to the specification of knowledge, skills and competencies required by psychologists. A common qualification which enables psychologists to practise as such and a specification of the knowledge, skills and competence required by psychologists will promote free movement of professional psychologists in Europe, and guarantee a high standard of qualification and practice, as well as protecting a frequently vulnerable public.

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