Brussels, 13/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 12 June, the three EU institutions managed to reach an agreement on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
This agreement will allow the introduction of a European card recording professional skills and qualifications. The new directive also creates a warning system for healthcare professionals (doctors, healthcare and veterinary staff), which will prevent professionals convicted of a crime or subject to disciplinary action transferring their practice to another member state.
Michel Barnier, the commissioner for the internal market “congratulated the European Parliament and Council for reaching an agreement on one of the priorities of the Single Market Act 1”. According to the commissioner introducing a more efficient system for recognising qualifications will help “tackle labour shortages in Europe and help highly skilled jobseekers, particularly young people”.
The directive was proposed in 2005 and aims to simplify recognition of the 800 regulated European professions, and frame automatic recognition of seven specific professions (doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, vets and architects). The two major innovations in this directive are the warning system and the European professional card. The latter is an electronic certificate delivered by the member state of origin which, in temporary stays abroad, will replace the existing declaration procedures and allow “professionals to provide services without any other formalities with regard to qualifications”, said Barnier. It will be introduced for professions requesting it.
The directive includes an update of the training conditions for professions where automatic recognition of professional qualifications exists. These updates relate to entry-level (nurses and midwives), minimum training period (doctors, dentists, midwives, architects) and/or the list of knowledge and skills (nurses, midwives, vets and architects) and activities (pharmacists), the Commission says. A common training framework will be put in place to define the knowledge, skills and necessary competencies for exercising a profession The qualifications obtained from within these training systems will automatically be recognised in other member states. MEPs sought to ensure that this directive also covered paid and unpaid training periods which “are part of the training that creates access to the regulated profession”, stated the EP. The EP committee responsible for this matter will still have to validate this agreement before the summer and the plenary will confirm it in October. (SP/transl.fl)