In a judgment issued on Thursday 25 February, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Member States may allow partial access to one of the professions covered by the mechanism for the automatic recognition of professional qualifications, including some healthcare professions (Case C-940/19).
In France, a dispute arose between a number of professional healthcare organisations and the government concerning statutory instruments that allow partial access to all healthcare professions, including those professions that the mechanism for automatic recognition of professional qualifications applies to, as set out in Directive 2005/36.
The French Conseil d’État (Council of State) referred the case to the Court of Justice, which noted that the Directive makes provision for a system of automatic recognition of evidence - of formal qualifications for the profession of doctor, general care nurse, dental practitioner, veterinary surgeon, midwife or pharmacist - on the basis of the coordination of minimum training conditions.
However, the Court stated that professionals who benefit from the automatic recognition of their professional qualifications are excluded from partial access under EU law, unlike the professions that are covered by automatic recognition. In this way, the Court distinguished between the use of the terms “professions” and “professionals”.
According to the EU judges, partial access meets the following objectives: - it abolishes the obstacles to the free movement of persons and services; - it grants partial access to professionals requesting that access where, in the host Member State, the activities concerned are part of a profession with a larger scope of activities than in the home Member State and the differences between the fields of activity are so large that a full programme of education and training would be required from the professionals to compensate for shortcomings.
The judgment can be found at: http://bit.ly/2NEW1f1 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)