It consists of 9 transversal guidelines e.g. funding, 7 sectoral guidelines e.g. schools, and two social inclusion guidelines e.g. vulnerable groups in society. The aims of guidelines, their target groups, the underlying operational principles, and the internal structure of each guideline are similar to Guidelines developed by representatives of national authorities in EU Member States in 2015 through the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN), a Member State led policy network, supported by the European Commission.

Cross-references are inserted within each guideline to indicate the interconnections and relationship with other guidelines. This is undertaken in great detail for the sectoral guidelines, showing their links with the transversal guidelines but not in such detail for the social inclusion guidelines.

The ‘new’ framework acknowledges and builds on the guidelines for the development of lifelong guidance systems and policies (2015) which were based on collective underpinning work by representatives of the Member States, international reviews, and best (policy and system) practices. It updates and further develops the content of the 2015 publication and adds relevant references.

It is always a daunting task to try to capture the complexities of policies and systems for career guidance within and across the education, training, employment, and social inclusion fields into a single accessible document for policy developers, particularly where at policy development level, many key administrators have multiple subject tasks and do not have the luxury of dedicated roles for studying career guidance policy and systems developments.

Between 2013 and 2015, representatives of national authorities in the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN) embarked on the development of a set of EU reference points for policies and systems for lifelong guidance and produced a set of guidelines for policy developers in EU Member States based on their knowledge and experience in 58 pages. The Guidelines were developed and owned by the Member States. They have been widely used in Member States since their publication and translated into Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Latvian, Serbian, and Swedish.

Fast forward to 2025/6. Cedefop embarked on the production of a new tool of its own, based on the 2015 Guidelines, supported by a group of experts, and resulting in a publication of 138 pages. The density of the new publication and its presentation style, reflecting its authorship mainly by experts, represent both a richness and a challenge for multitasking policy developers who are its primary target group. While the updating of the 2015 Guidelines is both welcome and overdue, their political ownership has moved from Member States to an agency of the European Commission without a clear explanation for such a move nor how that ownership was transferred. An EU political endorsement of the new document by its primary target group in the Member States remains to be achieved.