European Digital Credentials (EDC): What they are and how to issue them

Bringing Trusted, Verifiable Qualifications to Open edX LMS

Digital certification of skills and qualifications is becoming a core part of how learning is recognised across Europe. As courses move online and micro-credentials gain traction, universities and institutions need a way to issue certificates that are not only convenient but also secure, portable, and independently verifiable. This is exactly what European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDCs) are designed to do, and where our work as a Verified Open edX® Service Partner comes in.

What are European Digital Credentials (EDC)?

A European Digital Credential for Learning (EDC) is a verifiable, digital version of a credential that an organisation issues to a learner to document their learning. EDCs can cover a wide range of achievements: diplomas, training certificates, micro-credentials, certificates of participation, and more. They can be issued in all EU and Europass languages, and each credential is protected by a qualified electronic seal applied by its issuing organisation.

In short, an EDC is a certificate that a computer can read and anyone can verify, its authenticity does not depend on trusting the sender, because the trust is built into the credential itself.

Why do European Digital Credentials matter?

For learners, EDCs are natively digital, so a qualification can be shared instantly with an employer or another institution, no scanning or photocopying required. Credentials can be stored securely in the Europass Wallet (users need to create a Europass profile here), where learners manage them alongside their CV and other documents, and share them via time-limited links or PDF exports that keep the learner in control of their own data.

For the wider European education system, EDCs support two long-standing goals: the transparency and transferability of qualifications. They fit into an existing framework of tools - Europass, the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), and the ESCO classification of skills, qualifications and occupations - that together make learning achievements understandable across borders and across all official Europass languages. Underpinning the data itself is the European Learning Model (ELM), the common data standard that describes what a credential contains.

Micro-credentials are a natural fit here. As the European Commission has stressed, micro-credentials are not meant to replace traditional degrees but to complement them, offering a flexible, customisable way to recognise specific skills. A remaining challenge is that there is still no central infrastructure for the national recognition of these digital certificates, but the direction of travel across Europe is clear.

Benefits for learners

Ownership and control: learners hold their credentials in the Europass Wallet and decide who sees them, for how long, through time-limited share links.
Instant, paperless sharing: a credential can be sent to an employer or university in seconds, with no scanning or certified copies.
Trusted and tamper-proof: because each EDC is sealed, any recipient can independently confirm it is authentic and unaltered.
Portable across Europe: issued in all Europass languages and aligned with the EQF, an EDC is understandable well beyond the country where it was earned.

Benefits for training providers and universities

Fraud protection: the qualified electronic seal makes forgery immediately detectable, protecting your institution's reputation.
Efficient, scalable issuance: credentials can be generated automatically from course data rather than produced by hand, especially powerful when courses run on Open edX.
Interoperability: built on ELM, EQF, and ESCO, your credentials are recognised and understood across the EU.
Future-proof compliance: issuing EDCs aligns your institution with EU digital-education policy and the emerging micro-credential frameworks.
Lower administrative burden: less paper, less manual verification, fewer re-issue requests.

Screenshot of a European Digital Credential displayed in the Europass EDC Viewer, showing the credential title, holder's name, issuing institution and verification checks.

Example of an electronically sealed EDC, showing the built-in authentication and verification checks. Source: https://europa.eu/europass/digital-credentials/viewer/#/home

Getting Started with European Digital Credentials

Ready to issue EDCs with us?

Turn your Open edX course completions into trusted, verifiable credentials, let's build it together.

Our plugin is ready, and we're looking for forward-thinking partners to bring it to life: universities, academies, training providers, and government institutions that want to issue sealed, tamper-proof credentials their learners can carry anywhere in Europe.

If your organisation issues (or plans to issue) European Digital Credentials and runs courses on Open edX, we'll set up a free trial instance and run a pilot with you, the whole journey, from course completion to a fully sealed, verifiable EDC.

Who can seal an EDC?

The trust behind an EDC rests on the electronic seal, so a key question for any institution is how to obtain the ability to seal. In practice, there are two routes.

Universities, schools, and training providers can apply their own institutional electronic seal directly to a credential, provided they possess a qualified electronic seal certificate issued by a Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP). To find and verify these providers across Europe, the European Commission offers the EU/EEA Trusted List Browser, a public online tool that displays national trusted lists and the List of Trusted Lists (LOTL) in an easy-to-read format, so institutions can identify qualified trust service providers and check their digital services. (Europass also provides examples of the certificate types accepted, on its European Digital Credentials for Learning page).

If an institution does not have its own sealing hardware or service, a trusted third party or consortium can issue and seal the EDC on its behalf, for example, the European MOOC Consortium's e-sealing service. This lowers the barrier for smaller providers and MOOC platforms that want to issue verifiable credentials without building the sealing infrastructure themselves. We're glad to say that we work closely with the German University of Digital Science (UDS), and together with the MOOCHub consortium, we are working towards enabling e-sealing for credentials issued through Open edX (the open source learning platforms).

How does it work? The electronic seal explained

The electronic seal is what makes the whole system trustworthy. Every EDC carries a set of built-in authentication and verification checks, so anyone viewing a credential can verify who issued and sealed it, whether the seal is valid, and whether the credential has been altered. If the content is altered, the seal breaks and the checks fail, making forgery immediately detectable. Standards for electronic signatures and seals therefore play a central role in generating the trust that EDCs depend on.

Practically, the flow looks like this: a learning achievement is captured as structured data (in the European Learning Model format), the issuing organisation applies its qualified electronic seal, and the sealed credential is delivered to the learner's Europass Wallet or by email. From that point on, anyone the learner shares it with can verify it, without having to contact the issuer.

Is issuing EDCs free?

Mostly, yes. The tools the European Commission provides for issuing European Digital Credentials, and the Europass Wallet where learners store them, are free to use. For learners, receiving, storing, and sharing an EDC costs nothing.

The one cost that typically applies to an issuing institution is acquiring a qualified electronic seal certificate from a Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP), which is a paid commercial service. Institutions that instead rely on a third-party or consortium sealing service (see "Who can seal an EDC?" above) can often cover the sealing through that arrangement rather than purchasing their own certificate.

Are EDCs mandatory?

No. Issuing European Digital Credentials is optional. They are a European standard and infrastructure that institutions can choose to adopt; there is no legal obligation to replace traditional certificates with EDCs. Many institutions issue EDCs alongside — rather than instead of — their existing diplomas and certificates. The value comes from the added trust, portability, and interoperability, not from a mandate.

How does it work? The electronic seal explained

EDC vs. traditional PDF certificates

A PDF certificate is easy to produce and share, but it is also easy to forge and hard to verify, a recipient has little way to confirm it is authentic or unaltered. An EDC is machine-readable and carries a qualified electronic seal, so any tampering breaks the seal and becomes immediately visible, and its origin can be checked against the EU Trusted Lists. In short: a PDF asks you to trust the sender; an EDC lets you verify.

EDC vs. Open Badges

Open Badges (now maintained under 1EdTech) are a popular, lightweight way to recognise skills and micro-achievements, and they work well for informal and non-formal learning. However, their verification usually depends on the issuer's hosting remaining online, and they do not carry the legal weight of a qualified electronic seal. EDCs are anchored in the EU's eIDAS trust framework, which gives them a higher, legally recognised level of assurance across the EU, making them a stronger fit for formal qualifications, diplomas, and accredited micro-credentials. The two approaches can also be complementary.

EDC vs. W3C Verifiable Credentials

W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are a general, global data-model standard for expressing tamper-evident credentials. EDCs are not a rival to this: the European Learning Model (ELM) that underpins EDCs is aligned with the W3C Verifiable Credentials model and adds a European trust layer on top, a shared education vocabulary (ELM), qualified electronic seals under eIDAS, and integration with the Europass ecosystem. An EDC can therefore be understood as a European, education-specific, eIDAS-anchored profile within the wider Verifiable Credentials landscape.

Can Open edX issue EDCs?

Open edX LMS is one of the world's leading open-source platforms for online learning, which makes it a natural place to generate credentials at scale. On its own, Open edX issues completion certificates rather than sealed EDCs, but that is exactly the gap we are closing. As a verified Open edX service provider, Abstract-Technology is developing a plugin that connects course completion on Open edX directly to the European Digital Credentials ecosystem.

Our plugin generates files containing learner data that are then passed to an external sealing institution, data protection is a key consideration. The workflow is designed with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in mind, ensuring that only the minimum necessary learner information is included in the credential data and that appropriate data-processing safeguards govern the exchange between the LMS operator and the sealing institution.

Illustration showing the process of issuing European Digital Credentials, using icons for the institution, credential and learner.

How European Digital Credentials are issued — from institution to learner. Source: https://europa.eu/europass/digital-credentials/viewer/#/home

Further reading:

Bring verifiable EU credentials to your learners.

Let's connect