Welcome to the European Association for Counselling!

Our vision is to strengthen counselling within Europe, to make counselling accessible for all – to empower people. We should improve the conditions of the daily work of all counsellors.

I hope that this document will serve as a guideline for you if you want to join us in our efforts to establish counselling as a European profession with clear goals, as formulated in the term’s definition. In this chapter, we reaffirm the standards of excellence and continuous growth necessary if we, as counsellors, respond to the growing needs of people who are confronted with new educational, socio-political, cultural and economic realities.

This chapter also shows the progress of the European Association for Counselling. It follows the publication of the Charter of Ethics for Practical Counsellors and the Minimum Standards for the Training of European Counsellors. The European Certificate in counselling introduces a new level of qualification that genuinely reflects the status of counsellors receiving EAC accreditation and illustrates our acceptance of our different nationalities and cultures and the commonality of our efforts as European counsellors.