These European guidelines on validating non-formal and informal learning result from more than two years' cooperation between European countries in the cluster on recognition of learning outcomes and the Education and training 2010 process. While referring to the common European principles on identifying and validating nonformal and informal learning, adopted by the Council of Ministers in 2004, these guidelines provide expert advice to be used voluntarily by stakeholders at national and local levels. The aim is to contribute to developing diverse and high quality, cost efficient validation approaches in Europe, thus supporting lifelong and lifewide learning.