# Verifying digital educational credentials across borders

> The European Commission, together with member states of the European Blockchain Partnership, established a Europe-wide infrastructure for digital educational credentials. Through this network, universities and training institutions can issue and verify tamper-proof digital diplomas and certificates across national borders. Citizens gain sovereign control over their qualifications, while employers and authorities can verify authenticity instantly without administrative overhead.

**Sector:** Tertiary sector · **Industry:** Continuing education and e-learning · **Organisation:** European Commission / European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) member states · **Maturity level:** Production

Canonical URL: https://www.sapientblock.com/en/use-cases/european-commission-digitale-bildungsnachweise-grenzueberschreitend-verifizieren

## Documentation status

- **Project status:** Production
- **Evidence:** Evidence medium
- **Editorial review:** pending

## Description

The European Commission, in cooperation with the member states of the European Blockchain Partnership, has created a Europe-wide trust infrastructure to digitally verify educational qualifications. Institutions in the education sector traditionally face the challenge that foreign certificates and training certificates can only be validated with considerable verification effort. Through the shared network, education providers can digitally sign documents and store them verifiably on a distributed infrastructure. Citizens can manage their verified certificates themselves and easily present them to authorised bodies.

The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure provides a cross-border foundation for verifiable credentials in the European education area. The core of the solution is a network of permissioned nodes based on Ethereum technology, operated by European member states. Education providers such as universities and continuing education academies cryptographically sign graduation certificates and anchor their validity decentrally in the network. Employers and partner universities can verify the authenticity and validity of a presented diploma within seconds via standardised interfaces. The system protects against document forgery, eliminates time-consuming manual enquiries with issuers, and returns sovereignty over educational biographies to learners.

## Benefits

- Lower administrative costs for authenticity verification
- Faster hiring procedures within the internal market
- Simple cross-border recognition of educational credentials
- Elimination of costly paper certifications
- Forgery-proof document verification
- Drastic reduction of bureaucratic verification times
- Sovereign data management by the learner
- Complete control over one’s own educational biography
- Faster proof of acquired competencies

## Challenges

- Effort required to convert existing administrative verification processes
- Acceptance and dissemination of digital credential apps among citizens
- Need for standardisation across different national education systems
- Integration of existing university administration systems into the blockchain infrastructure
- Required technical basic understanding for handling digital identity wallets

## Technology foundation

The solution is based on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), a Europe-wide network of permissioned nodes based on Ethereum technology. This distributed ledger infrastructure is operated by EU member states and serves as a trusted layer for verifying digital certificates using cryptographic checksums.

## Sources

- [Home - EBSI - European Commission](https://ec.europa.eu/ebsi)
- [European blockchain services infrastructure](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-blockchain-services-infrastructure)
- [EBSI, the first EU-wide blockchain Infrastructure is surging ahead](https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/ebsi-first-eu-wide-blockchain-infrastructure-surging-ahead-2021-10-14_en)
- [European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI)](https://www.eqar.eu/qa-results/synergies/european-blockchain-service-infrastructure-ebsi/)