The Europass project team met with a representative from the European Students’ Union (ESU) on 30 April. The meeting was an opportunity to get input on the new Europass platform from the perspective of students and to discuss how ESU can be involved in the development of the new portal.

ESU supports the new Europass framework as students are already the main users of the current Europass. ESU was interested to know about how information on guidance will be provided and structured in the new platform. They suggested the use of an algorithm to provide live guidance.

The representative also stressed the issue of having adequate safeguards for managing and storing data in place. The representative pointed to the challenge of ensuring data protection when importing and exporting data between Europass and other tools (Europass interoperability). The Commission clarified that Europass will operate under the principle of full sovereignty of data, meaning that the individual owns his/her data and has full control over how they share it. In addition, the Commission plans to carry out a full data protection impact assessment and the result will be presented to the Europass Advisory Group.

ESU also signalled support for the user testing by connecting the Commission with potential end-users (students).