On Monday 1 July, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) drew up a mixed assessment of the implementation of the Directive on the recognition of professional qualifications, adopted in 2005 and revised in 2013, noting “the difficulty of having professional qualifications recognised”.
It was also concerned about the low level of use of the ‘IMI’ tool, the Internal Market Information System for professional qualifications, created to facilitate cooperation between the Member States and the Commission.
The ECA “found that when granting professional recognition, the authorities did not consider the alerts encoded in the system by other Member States, even when there were ‘substantial reasons’ for doing so, such as misconduct, ongoing disciplinary measures or criminal convictions”, explains the Court.
The directive should prevent Member States from imposing excessive conditions on citizens of other EU Member States who wish to practise a regulated profession outside their country of origin. The professional qualifications framework must also ensure that services provided in all Member States meet the same public health and safety standards.
“The recognition of professional qualifications in the EU is an essential mechanism, but it is used sparsely and inconsistently”. Many professions remain regulated and, “according to our calculations, around 6% of citizens who move to another Member State use the system for recognising professional qualifications”.
Most cases of professional mobility within the EU are not covered by this procedure, and there are weaknesses in the implementation of the directive that directly affect citizens wishing to practise a regulated profession in another Member State. These weaknesses relate to the lack of electronic procedures, differences in recognition fees between countries, and document requirements that are more onerous than those set out in the directive.
In the case of nurses, one of the most mobile professions in the EU, some countries require cover letters, as in Belgium.
Nor have citizens and authorities made much use of the elements introduced by the 2013 revision of the directive, such as the European Professional Card, partial access to professions or common training principles.
The cost of this card may also explain its low take-up. “The home and host Member States are entitled to charge a fee, and the costs of the procedure may represent an additional labour mobility obstacle for citizens. In the example used [...], nurses responsible for general care who obtained their qualification in Portugal and wish to pursue their activity in Austria, are charged a fee by both member states for the European Professional Card. Instead of paying €180-€250 for the standard recognition procedure in Austria, nurses relocating from Portugal to Austria would in fact pay around 20 % more in fees to get their qualification recognised with the European Professional Card”.
It is currently used mainly in two professions: mountain guides and estate agents.
Link to reports: https://aeur.eu/f/CWJ (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)