Standards
ESCO
Also known as: CEDEFOP ESCO, European Skills/Competences
The EU's multilingual taxonomy of skills, competences, and occupations — the standard alignment target for European credentials.
ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the EU's standardized taxonomy for skills and occupations, maintained by the European Commission and CEDEFOP. It provides IRIs for each skill, each occupation, and the relationships between them — so a credential can declare "this achievement aligns to ESCO competency X" in a machine-readable, cross-language way.
ESCO is the canonical alignment target for European credentials. It's what EUDI Wallet is expected to use, what EBSI trusted issuers map to, and what the European Skills Agenda drives toward. For LearnCoin tenants operating in the EU — Ewance, for instance — ESCO alignment is usually the default.
LearnCoin passes ESCO-aligned entries through OB 3.0's alignment[] field. A single credential can carry both an ESCO entry and an O*NET entry side by side, so the same signed credential is consumable by EU-centric and US-centric verifiers without re-issuance.
Related terms