The concept of micro-credentials aligns with European priorities aimed at promoting lifelong learning and the development of competence-based learning pathways. Its growing prominence has made it necessary to define shared criteria capable of ensuring a clear, transparent, and potentially recognisable identity.

The 2022 Council Recommendation represents the first attempt at systematisation, proposing a common framework for the definition and implementation of micro-credentials. However, its non-binding nature has left considerable room for interpretation by individual institutions, and the 2025 Progress Report shows that their use is still characterised by significant heterogeneity, underscoring the need for greater systematisation.

This research investigates the evolution of micro-credentials as a training tool within the European context, focusing on both common approaches and differences in their adoption and recognition. It does so through two main lines of inquiry.

The first line examines the relationship between micro-credentials and established instruments of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Methodologically, it relies on a documentary review of key Bologna Process outputs, with particular attention to ministerial communiqués and the work programmes of the Bologna Follow-Up Group (BFUG). The analysis aims to identify the main regulatory trajectories and to explore elements of continuity and discontinuity between EHEA mechanisms and the structure of micro-credentials.

The second line addresses recognition across different institutional systems, which is considered crucial to preventing the fragmentation of educational provision.This line of inquiry is divided into two phases. The first phase investigates, through documentary analysis of case studies, the structural conditions that foster interoperability, understood as a prerequisite for recognition. The second phase examines the formal and informal recognition processes that emerge from practice, through interviews with stakeholders involved in the implementation of micro-credentials.For this purpose, a number of European university alliances that already actively use micro-credentials are selected as the focus of the study.

By the end of the first year of the PhD, the aim is to develop an interpretative model of the processes of institutionalisation of micro-credentials in European Higher Education, linking established mechanisms with emerging practices.This model will clarify main tensions between standardisation and flexibility, and will help identify critical issues and possible development trajectories.