Brussels Moves to Recognise Foreign Qualifications, and the Empty South Counts Its Doctors

The European Commission this week proposed new legislation to make the recognition of professional qualifications easier for non-EU citizens, according to The Local Italy. The measure responds to what the outlet describes as a common complaint among people who have moved to the bloc from abroad and found their credentials unrecognised, or recognised only slowly and at cost.

The proposal is a draft. It must still pass through the ordinary legislative procedure, where the European Parliament and the member states' governments will each have their say, and national authorities would retain the practical work of assessing individual cases. Nothing changes for applicants on the day it was tabled.

For Italy the question cuts in two directions at once. The country has long relied on foreign-trained professionals — in medicine, nursing and engineering among others — to staff services that its own universities do not fill, while simultaneously being a country from which the professionally qualified emigrate in large numbers. The Local Italy frames the proposal as a response to a bloc-wide complaint rather than an Italian one, and the wire does not quantify how many people in Italy are affected.