This article seeks to describe briefly various initiatives taken to ease recognition and comparison of formal qualifications across borders in the EU. It takes a political angle, from binding legal instruments such as directives and decisions to policy instruments such as recommendations and voluntary action and covers 27 Member States with very different education and training systems and labour market structures. What characterises the various initiatives; what premises are they based on; which problems are they attempting to solve; and where do they possibly fall short? What is the development potential of the latest initiatives? (Contains 16 footnotes.)