In recent days, the Austrian ECo-Cwebsite publicized some great news: the BFI, the greatest centre for adulteducation in Austria has now been awarded the status of licensed ECo-C trainingcentre. It will, from now on, propose ECo-C preparation courses andexaminations to participants. This further gilds the banner of the certificate.

But it is important to note thatfor the ECo-C to truly be what it posits, a EuropeanCommunication Certificate, to realise all of its potential, it needs to finditself spread and taken up in other European countries. In part, this hasalready happened, as there are national ECo-C representatives in, for instance,Slovakia and Germany; we are on the right track. However, these two countries havea strong and tight connection to Austria, where the ECo-C was born. The distantones, the ones without such a strong link, are the ones where the question of “willthey” becomes pertinent.

Naturally, the span of thisarticle is not nearly long enough to make such an assessment for eachindividual country in Europe. This will be a general article; case studies andexamples drawn from specific countries may follow.

In general, though, it seems that,for smaller European countries, for workers from poorer countries, for theEURES professional program of the European Union, the ECo-C inherently makessense: the first are small enough to need international cooperation, the secondare poor enough to need additional qualifications valid elsewhere, and thethird, as a pan-European program, seeks to promote professional mobility.  The only question is when.

This cannot really be answered;Europe is presently traversing some troubled times, however such times can havetwo outcomes: either cause a swing towards rigidity, characterised by therefusal to try anything new until a problem is solved, or on the other side,reason that new structures are needed to remedy the situation. In Greece, inSpain, in Portugal, Ireland and beyond, the crisis may cause stakeholders andworkers to take a completely ethno-centric approach for a few years, in whichcase, the ECo-C would not arrive there yet. But the crisis may also demonstrateto these people the need to create a new corporate culture, a new set of communicationsor team processes and procedures, and then the ECo-C might take root tomorrow.

And yet, the real question is thetrendsetters: the larger countries and businesses, who are used to creating theprocedures they need, who work internationally. There is no doubt that ifeveryone else joins in, they will too; on this score, one can comfortably takea que sera sera attitude, knowingthat it will eventually happen.  However,the early expansion of the certificate would be much more beneficial to ECo-Ccertified professionals and businesses alike. So… is it likely?

In our opinion, there areimportant reasons for which large businesses should support the ECo-C. The mostpertinent of those is that hiring ECo-C certified professionals would assurethem of a certain standard of quality in their employees, one that could berelied on everywhere.

But as for large countries? Adoptionis certain, sooner or later. Early adoption, however will depend on specificfactors which, as already mentioned, will not be studied in this article: theexistence of training institutions, national regulations with respect to adulteducation and budgets; above all, personal interest and mobilization frompeople who value this certificate.

As one such person, the authorintends to look deeper into the matter and report findings in future articles.