The European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP)

In 1991, the European Association for Psychotherapy was founded in Vienna, Austria by psychotherapy organisations in a number of European countries and from a number of different modalities within psychotherapy. It now brings together nearly 200 organisations, from 40 European countries, with both national organisations and European - wide organisations in many different modalities, and by that, more than 120,000 psychotherapists.

The 21st of October 1990 Strasbourg Declaration on Psychotherapy is the bedrock of its commitment to creating a compatible and independent profession of psychotherapy across Europe.

The European Association for Psychotherapy (hereafter, the EAP) is concerned to protect the interest of this profession and the public it serves, by ensuring that the profession functions at an appropriate level of training and practice. This will help ensure that psychotherapists are trained to the EAP's standards and which will help guarantee the mobility of professional psychotherapists. This is in accordance with the aims of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the non-discrimination accord valid within the framework of the European Union (EU), and the principle of freedom of movement of persons and services.

The European Certificate of Psychotherapy is currently in general alignment with ISO/IEC 17024 (2012), which is an international standard that sets out criteria for an organisation's certification program for assessing and certifying the competence of individual persons in different occupations and professions.

Course Length

The total duration of the training will not be less than 3200 hours, spread over a minimum of seven years, with the first three years being the equivalent of a relevant university degree. The later four years of which must be in a training specific to psychotherapy and will not be less than 1400 hours.
 

Core Competencies:

These Core Competencies can be used as a basic minimum standard for any professional training in European psychotherapy. All the following Core Competencies are designed to be practiced at a professional level within psychotherapy, commensurate with having attained auniversity Master’s degree,or the equivalent, and having gone through at least 4-years of post-graduate education, training, and supervised practice, emphasizing the psychotherapist’s capacity for critical reflection and evaluation of their own professional practice.

These Core Competencies are also understood to be practiced in accordance with, and in conjunction with, the current versions of: the1990 Strasbourg Declaration on Psychotherapy; the EAP’s Statement of Ethical Principles; and with the context of the psychotherapist’s professional training being in accordance with the standards outlined in the EAP’s European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP) document (above)

Competencies for ECP