Press Release: Internal Market: European Commission publishes reports on how Professional Qualifications Directive works in practice

The first report on how the Professional Qualifications Directive works in practice has been published by the European Commission. The report, undertaken by the Commission's Internal Market department, identifies areas of concern such as Member States' reluctance to allow temporary mobility of professionals. The Commission is publishing simultaneously more than 170 reports on recognition of professional qualifications from Member State authorities. One main conclusion of these reports is that automatic recognition of qualifications is overall a positive achievement for professionals and for authorities but a number of issues merit further consideration such as extending the implementation of the proactive alert mechanism on malpractice between Member States and the training requirements in general. The next steps are: an extensive public consultation on the rules that are in place (to be launched by the end of 2010), an evaluation report (in autumn 2011) and a Green Paper (in 2012).