The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) was developed as a contribution to the Lisbon Strategy, the EU's broad agenda for improving the competitiveness of the EU as an economic area. A key aim of the Lisbon Process is to strengthen the efficiency of the EU's internal market with a view to making it easier for individuals and businesses to operate throughout the 27 member state economies and to develop the contribution made by knowledge and skills to growth.

The EQF is a common reference framework that aims to simplify the process of comparing national qualifications systems between member states. In the absence of the EQF, member states were faced with the challenge of having to work out on a bilateral basis what the qualifications in each other's systems meant in terms of learning achievement. This created problems of consistency and clarity as each bilateral process could generate its own approach and process for comparisons. This complicated and time-consuming process, with potentially high transaction costs for individuals and businesses, has been the reality for a good number of years, becoming an increasing challenge as mobility increased, at least in higher education.

The EQF is a broad instrument. Although sharing some of the same terms, the EQF is not a qualifications framework in the same way as a national system. The EQF has no regulatory or management purposes. It is generally referred to as a ‘meta-framework’ with a primary function of providing the means for translating what each member state's system means in commonly accepted definitions of learning achievement.