The VQA has additional responsibilities regarding the national programme for alignment with the Acquis including the harmonization studies in “Chapter 3: Right of establishment and freedom to provide services” and “Chapter 26: Education and culture”. Harmonization studies are on-going with regard to the following legislations:

• Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2008 on the establishment of the European Qualifications Framework for LLL (2008/C 111/01);
• Council Conclusions of 12 May 2009 on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (‘ET 2020’) (2009/C 119/02);
• Recommendation of 20 December 2012 on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (2012/C 398/01);
• Regulation (EU) No 1288/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013 establishing ‘Erasmus+’: the Union programme for education, training, youth and sport and repealing Decisions No 1719/2006/EC, No 1720/2006/EC and No 1298/2008/EC

As the studies related to the alignment with Acquis undoubtedly requires extensive expertise and team work, best practices of in the EU Member States (EU MSs) will be researched. For this purpose, a number of study visits, peer-learning and work shadowing activities will be planned and the results will be reported. During these visits, the vocational qualifications systems, recognitions of vocational qualifications systems and Europass centres of different countries will be observed along with the attendance of the stakeholders. A report covering all details such as the examples, models, principles and procedures related to external review of the bodies similar to the VQA will be prepared. The organizations to visit are going to be chosen according to their field of work and similarities of its activities to those of VQA. Organizational and reporting activities will be organized by the Contractor based on the needs identified by the VQA.