From the German XBildung project we have the following proposal
regarding the encoding of countries and other codes (ISCED2013, EQF/NQF, ISCED 2013) in future ELMO versions
for the sake of enhanced interoperability and reuse of multilingual ressources in Europe.

Context:
ELMO refers to "an Europass" ISO Country Code list under the namespace http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/Europass/V2.0

Other emerging standards like the SDG-Datamodels or the current Europass Learning Model refer to Publications Office Country code list instead: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/dataset/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/dataset/country

Example:
Germany instead of
<country>DE</country>
could also be referred to as
<country>http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country/DEU</country>

Poland instead of "PL" can be referred to
<country>PL</country>
could also be referred to as
<country>http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country/POL</country>

In doing so the data exchange interoperability specifications SDG and Europass benefit from the following features:

reasonings for changing to a new country code lists (still the same ISO 3166)

1. active governance and redistribution by EU Publications Office in different formats, see https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/dataset/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/dataset/country for more information

2. existing namespace, the namespace "http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/Europass/V2.0" became outdated to our understanding long time ago - when governance for Europass shifted from CEDEFOP to DG EMPL - when Publications Office started publishing Europass vocabularies here https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/europass

3. can express European realities like Kosovo or former countries like http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country/DDR or other countries not being able to be expressed via the current ELMO "Europass ISO List"

4. using URIs instead of values can bring all ELMO users the translation of country names in all EU languages
   see here for http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country/POL and http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country/DEU

5. the country code list from PO is used in other education specifications to express educational credentials like

• the future SDG data models
  see admin unit level 1 from ISA Core Vocabularies Location
  https://github.com/SEMICeu/SDG-sandbox/blob/master/evidences/tertiary_education_diploma_evidence/data_model/tertiary_education_diploma_evidence_tables.md
  

• Europass see https://github.com/european-commission-empl/European-Learning-Model/blob/master/Europass_Learning_Model.md#location (

)

So the proposal is here
to enhance european interoperability of ELMO
by expressing countries (and perhaps citizenships)
using the Publications Office country code list in form of using the concept URIs.
It bears the same two-digit ISO information but comes with the features described above.

Please not that the same benefits are true for the following Publications Office code lists currently used in ELMO as "strings" instead of URIs:
a) EQF/DQF http://data.europa.eu/snb/eqf/25831c2
b) languages https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/dataset/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/dataset/language
c) ISCED-F 2013 https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/dataset/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/dataset/international-education-classification

Sebastian from XBildung.de (SDG and online access act standardisation in Germany for school and higher education)