PURPOSE: to facilitate the recognition of professional qualifications of nurses responsible for general care trained in Romania.
PROPOSED ACT: Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.
BACKGROUND: Directive 2005/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (the Professional Qualifications Directive) sets out the rules on cross-border recognition of qualifications for access to regulated professions, as well as minimum training requirements for several professions, including nurses responsible for general care.
To facilitate the recognition of qualifications of nurses responsible for general care whose qualifications did not meet the minimum training requirements upon accession, Romania has set up a special upgrading programme to enable participants to upgrade their professional qualifications to satisfy all the minimum training requirements set out for the profession of nurse responsible for general care in Directive 2005/36/EC. For this purpose, Romania liaised beforehand with other Member States and the Commission.
The upgrading programme started in the 2014/2015 academic year. According to the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, by the end of the 2018/2019 academic year, it had been completed by 23 higher education graduates and more than 3 000 post-secondary graduates.
Romania presented the results of the special upgrading programme in 2018 to the relevant expert group (Group of coordinators for the recognition of professional qualifications) and, following consultations, no Member State objected to the proposal that the graduates should benefit from a more favourable recognition regime.
The Professional Qualifications Directive, as currently applicable, does not oblige host Member States to automatically recognise the qualifications of nurses who have successfully completed the upgrading programme. However, the Commission envisages a revision of the Directive’s acquired rights provisions for Romanian nurses following the assessment of the upgrading programme’s results.
CONTENT: the Commission is proposing a targeted amendment of the rules of special acquired rights laid down in Article 33(a) of Directive 2005/36/EC to facilitate the recognition process for nurses responsible for general care who have completed the Romanian upgrading programme. More specifically, the Commission proposes that these nurses should benefit from recognition under special acquired rights without the need to prove professional experience.