Diploma Supplement

The Diploma Supplement (DS) is a transparency instrument developed by the Council of Europe, the European Commission and UNESCO-CEPES between 1996 and 1998. The last version of the Diploma Supplement was adopted as the Annex IV of the Paris Communiqué (2018), along with the Explanatory Notes that detail how the Diploma Supplement should be filled in and used.

The Diploma Supplement is a document attached to a higher education diploma. It gives a detailed description of its holder's learning outcomes, and the nature, level, context, content and status of individual study components. It includes several pieces of information: the name of the holder of the Supplement, the qualification and its level and function, the contents and achieved results, certification of the Supplement, information on the national higher education system under which the Supplement was issued, and other relevant information. It is free from any value judgements, equivalence statements or suggestions about recognition.

The Diploma Supplement helps higher education institutions, employers, recognition authorities and other stakeholders more easily understand graduates' skills and competences. In this way, it promotes transparency and recognition in order to facilitate mobility, access to lifelong learning opportunities, and graduate employability.

The Diploma Supplement forms an integral part of three important initiatives in the field of higher education internationalisation and of the recognition of qualifications across borders: the Lisbon Recognition Convention, the Bologna Process, and Europass. Within the Bologna Process, the Diploma Supplement was embraced from the beginning, with the Bologna Declaration (1999) asking for the adoption of a system of easily and comparable degrees, also through the implementation of the Diploma Supplement. Furthermore, in the Berlin Communiqué (2003), the ministers agreed on the four essential conditions for the delivery of the Diploma Supplement: i) received by all graduates, ii) automatically, iii) free of charge, and iv) in a widely spoken European language.

In the Bucharest Communiqué (2012), the ministers underlined the interdependence between Bologna tools, notably the ECTS, the Diploma Supplement, the Lisbon Recognition Convention, the Qualification Framework of EHEA and the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the EHEA. They noted how all must be implemented based on the learning outcomes.