For a quality education free of fraud and corruption – a new Recommendation adopted by the Committee of Ministers.Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)18 on countering education fraud addresses the need for a common European approach to ethics, integrity and transparency in education. It makes recommendations for four areas related to education fraud: prevention, prosecution, international cooperation and monitoring.

Education is understood in its broader scope, with all measures contained in the text applying to access to, and all levels and forms of, education, offline and online, from pre-primary to higher education, including vocational education and lifelong learning.

The Recommendation and explanatory memorandum include definitions of education fraud, plagiarism and different types of providers of fraudulent documents such as diploma, accreditation and visa “mills”, as well as essay banks.