2013 News
8 November, 2013
On October 2nd, 2013, the European Commission adopted a communication on evaluating national regulations on access to regulated professions. The objective of the Commission is to identify and map out the restrictions to the access and exercise of regulated professions. The communication refers in particular to health professions.
On November 15th, 2013, the Council adopted the revised Directive on the recognition of professional qualifications. This follows the adoption by the European Parliament last month. Member states now have two years in which to transpose the new rules into national legislation. The main features of the new Directive introduce a pro-active fitness to practise alert mechanism; the ability for competent authorities to assess the language competence of professionals after recognition but before access to the profession; a revised definition of basic medical training of 5 years and 5,500 hours; a requirement for member states to encourage continuing professional education and training and the possibility of common European training frameworks and tests which would establish minimum education and training criteria for medical specialties that do not currently benefit from automatic recognition.