New regional Forum adopts Memorandum and Position Paper calling for professional recognition of career guidance and meaningful partnership with associations in European and national policy
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia – Four national professional associations from Czechia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia formally established the Central and Eastern European Guidance Associations’ Forum (CEEGAF) on 22 June 2026, signing a Memorandum of Cooperation at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava. The signing was organized during the inaugural conference of the Forum “Pathway to Qualification in Career Guidance,” which brought together career guidance professionals, policymakers, and sector stakeholders to address current challenges in professional qualification of career practitioners.
Reinforced Regional Cooperation
The Memorandum was signed by:
- ZKPRK – Združenie pre kariérové poradenstvo a rozvoj kariéry (Slovakia)
- SKPKR – Sdružení pro kariérové poradenství a kariérový rozvoj (Czech Republic)
- MPT – Magyar Pedagógiai Társaság, Career Education and Guidance Division (Hungary)
- ACROM – Asociația Consilierilor Români (Romania)
Defined in the Memorandum as a “non-formal, low-cost platform for cooperation, open to enlargement,” the Forum also invites additional signatories from other CEE countries. Governance rests on a rotating annual presidency and consensus-based decision-making, with a model built on voluntary, in-kind contributions. Planned activities include an annual webinar, a biennial conference, a shared repository of good practices at cee-guidance.eu, and at least one joint policy message per year. The Forum will also operate as a regional interlocutor for European bodies including CEDEFOP CareersNet, Euroguidance, and IAEVG.
Morning Session: Qualifications in Career Guidance and Adult Education
The conference opened with a morning session focused on the qualification of career counsellors in adult education in Slovakia, examining how career guidance fits within the architecture of lifelong learning and the role of emerging financing instruments such as individual education accounts.
“To empower every citizen to navigate the lifelong learning system and use various financing options such as individual training accounts, it is important thatqualified career counselors are able to effectively provide their services.”
Vladimír Pálfi, Alliance of Sector Councils
“I am pleased that career counseling is becoming an even stronger part of lifelong learning. Behind every retraining, course, career change or new beginning, there is always a person who needs support, information, or just a little encouragement to take the next step.”
Zuzana Valachová, Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic
A Position Paper Grounded in Comparative Research
Alongside the Memorandum, the Forum formally adopted a Position Paper on “Professional Associations and the Development of Lifelong Guidance Systems in Central and Eastern Europe.” The paper draws on a comparative research programme involving 337 members, interviews, and focus groups across the four founding countries (Borbély-Pecze, Hlošková, Šprlák & Crăciun, 2026).
The research documents lifelong guidance systems in the CEE region marked by fragmented governance across education, employment, and social sectors; uneven access to services, particularly for vulnerable groups; weak professionalisation frameworks; and under-resourced associations operating largely on a voluntary basis. Despite this, each founding association significantly contributes to shaping national policy and professional standards.
A comparative benchmarking of national competence frameworks revealed that client-facing and operational competences are well developed, while system-level competences such as evaluation of services, research literacy, digital skills, and ethical reflection, are underdeveloped across all four countries. The Position Paper and the accompanying Guidelines for Professional Associations in Guidance in CEE (Borbély-Pecze et al., 2026) translate these findings into concrete steps for association governance and practice.
Calls to International and European Bodies
Noting that professional associations already act as de facto system actors “even within weakly institutionalised policy environments,” the Position Paper calls on national governments and European institutions to:
- recognise professional associations as legitimate partners in the development and implementation of lifelong guidance policy;
- establish or restart functioning national lifelong guidance forums that give associations and other actors a standing mechanism for contribution;
- create conditions allowing civil society associations to sustain their contribution to national lifelong guidance systems without depending solely on short-term project funding;
- invest in the accessibility of guidance services, with particular attention to vulnerable groups;
- support system-level analysis and policy-focused dialogue across the CEE region.
In turn, the Forum commits to contributing regional perspectives to European processes including CEDEFOP CareersNet and IAEVG, and to maintaining a shared repository of good practices and updated guidelines for association governance.
An Open Platform for the CEE Region
A defining feature of the Memorandum is its explicit openness. CEEGAF is conceived as an inclusive, evolving platform: professional associations active in career guidance across Central and Eastern Europe are invited to engage with Forum activities – including webinars, conferences, and knowledge exchange – and to consider formal accession to the Memorandum. Regional cooperation is presented in the founding documents not as an aspiration but as a structural necessity: neighbouring countries face similar challenges but have, until now, accumulated relatively little structured mutual professional knowledge.
Further information on the Forum, its research outputs, and the Guidelines for Professional Associations in Guidance in CEE is available at: www.cee-guidance.eu
Notes to Editors
About CEEGAF
The Central and Eastern European Guidance Associations’ Forum (CEEGAF) is a non-formal network of professional associations in career guidance, established in Bratislava on 22 June 2026. Its founding members are ZKPRK (Slovakia), SKPKR (Czech Republic), MPT – Career Education and Guidance Division (Hungary), and ACROM (Romania). The Forum was established as a principal outcome of the Erasmus+ KA210-VET project “Central and Eastern European Guidance Associations’ Forum” (Form ID KA210-VET-B399D309, 2024–2026), co-funded by the European Union. Website: www.cee-guidance.eu
Key Research References
Borbély-Pecze, T. B., Hlošková, L., Šprlák, T., & Crăciun, M. (2026). Career Guidance in the Central and South-Eastern European Region. Opus et Educatio, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.3311/ope.43780
Borbély-Pecze, T. B., et al. (2026). Benchlearning comparison of competence frameworks for career guidance practitioners in Central and Eastern Europe. Discover Education (in press).
Borbély-Pecze, T. B., et al. (2026). Guidelines for Professional Associations in Guidance in CEE. CEEGAF.
Borbély-Pecze, B.T., Crăciun, M., Deac, V., Freibergová, Z., Hloušková L., Juhász, Á.,Martinkovič, M., Mullerová, A., Suhajda, C.S., Šprlák, T., Tolli, K. (2026). Guidelines For Professional Associations In Guidance In CEE: Supporting Professionalism And System Development. Central and Eastern European Guidance Associations’ Forum. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20691308
Media Contact
Tomáš Šprlák, ZKPRK – Združenie pre kariérové poradenstvo a rozvoj kariéry
info@cee-guidance.eu / www.cee-guidance.eu
Issued on behalf of the founding associations of the Central and Eastern European Guidance Associations’ Forum (CEEGAF). Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.