Registered, Verified, Vetted: What Each Word Actually Proves in Europe

Registered means a business legally exists in a commercial register. Licensed or qualified means someone holds a recognised trade competence — a German Meisterbrief, say. Verified means a person checked those documents once. Vetted, as Veted uses the word, means all of it together and kept current: a valid licence, insurance in force, an authentic review history, and no unresolved complaints, re-checked periodically rather than confirmed once and forgotten. The four words sit on a ladder, and most people assume the bottom rung is the top one.

Registered: the business exists, nothing more

Registration is the floor. It confirms a legal entity has been entered in a commercial or trade register — Germany's Handelsregister, Portugal's IMPIC listing for construction, a national company registry. That is genuinely useful: it means there is a real entity with an address you can pursue, a tax number, and a paper trail.

But registration says nothing about competence, insurance, or conduct. A company can be flawlessly registered and still be uninsured, unqualified for the work you need, and trailing a line of unhappy clients. Registration proves the business is real. It does not prove it is good.

Licensed or qualified: proven trade competence

One rung up is a licence or a formal qualification, which proves the person has met a competence standard for their trade. This is where Europe's regulated-trade systems do real work.

• Germany: the Meisterbrief (master craftsman's certificate) is required to run a business in many skilled trades, and the firm appears in the Handwerksrolle at the Handwerkskammer.
• United Kingdom: Gas Safe registration for gas work, and a body like RICS for chartered surveyors, certify specific competence rather than mere existence.
• France: qualifications such as Qualibat or an RGE label signal assessed capability, particularly for building and energy work.
• Italy: a DM 37/08 declaration of conformity ties a specific installation to a qualified installer.
• The point: a licence answers 'can they do the work properly?', which registration never touches.

Verified: someone checked, once

Verified is a real step up, and also where a lot of directories quietly stop. It means a human being looked at the documents — the licence, maybe an insurance certificate — and confirmed they existed and matched at that moment. That is worth something. It filters out the obvious fabrications.

The weakness is the tense. Verification is a snapshot. Insurance lapses, licences are suspended, a clean record acquires a complaint, and a 'verified' badge awarded eighteen months ago tells you nothing about today. Verified proves someone checked once. It does not prove the check is still true.

Vetted: the full ladder, kept current

Vetting is the top rung, and it is deliberately harder to earn. It combines every layer below it and adds the one thing a snapshot cannot give you: currency. A vetted professional is not just registered and once-verified — they are demonstrably still trustworthy now.

• A current licence or qualification on the relevant national registry, not an expired or self-declared one.
• Liability insurance that is in force today, and of the right type for the work — structural cover where structural cover is required.
• An authentic review history: a pattern of real feedback over time, not a single testimonial or a suspicious burst of five-star reviews.
• No unresolved complaints — disputes that are open and unaddressed, rather than the occasional resolved grievance any long-running business accumulates.
• Re-checked periodically, so the status reflects the present, not the day the badge was first issued.

What each word does and does not guarantee

Put plainly: registration guarantees the entity exists and can be pursued, but not that it is competent, insured, or well-behaved. A licence guarantees competence in the trade, but not that insurance is current or clients are happy. Verification guarantees the documents were genuine when checked, but not that they still are. Only vetting attempts to guarantee all of it at once, on an ongoing basis — and even then it is a considered judgement, not a warranty, because no check can promise the future conduct of a business. What vetting removes is the predictable, avoidable failure: the lapsed policy, the suspended licence, the pattern of complaints hiding behind one good review.

How Veted defines vetted

When Veted lists a professional as vetted, it means we confirmed a valid licence on the relevant national registry, insurance genuinely in force and appropriate to the work, an authentic review history rather than a manufactured one, and no unresolved complaints — and that we re-check rather than badge once and walk away. It is the same four-part standard whether the professional is a plumber in Denmark, a surveyor in the UK, or a builder in Spain, because the questions that protect you do not change at the border.

The words are not interchangeable, and the whole cost of confusing them lands after you have paid. Registered tells you a business exists. Vetted tells you it should be trusted with your floor, your roof, or your savings — and that someone checked recently enough for the answer to still be true.