Three countries infringe laws on professional qualifications

Citation

(2005), "Three countries infringe laws on professional qualifications", Education + Training, Vol. 47 No. 8/9. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2005.00447hab.009

Three countries infringe laws on professional qualifications

The European Commission has asked France and Spain to rectify breaches of EU law on professional qualifications. The commission has asked Spain to amend its legislation on engineering qualifications, while France has been asked to change its law on the use of the professional titles for dentists.

A number of Italians, who obtained their first degree at Italian universities and then passed the Italian state examination giving them the right to practise as engineers, complained that they were refused the right to practise as engineers in Spain. This appears to contravene European legislation on the mutual recognition of qualifications gained after at least three years’ higher-education study.

France allows dentists who qualified in France to use the title “doctor of dental surgery”, but insists that dentists who qualified in other EU member states use the term “dental surgeon”. The commission believes that this puts dentists who qualified in EU states outside France at a disadvantage, and is exactly the kind of discrimination that EU law seeks to eliminate.

Meanwhile, the European Court of Justice has found Austria guilty of discriminating against non-Austrians in its university admission procedures. Non-Austrians have to satisfy not only general Austrian university admission requirements but also the requirements for immediate admission to their chosen course of study. The court found that these requirements lead to indirect discrimination on the grounds of nationality.