Practical Documents Boosting Cross-border Mobility by Facilitating the Recognition of Qualifications

Procedures regarding the recognition of qualifications for regulated professions can be challenging. It can be difficult to identify the right competent authority and it may be necessary to submit extensive documentation. Due to their complexity, recognition procedures have often been accused of lacking transparency, being complex, time-consuming, and sometimes even discouraging of mobility.

By contrast, well-running recognition procedures are important to facilitate cross-border employment. If a recognition decision does not come through in time, this may result in the loss of a job opportunity or a decision to abandon cross-border work altogether. This is detrimental to cross-border employment, mobility, optimal resource allocation, and hampers the realisation of EU free movement rights.

Indeed non-recognition has been considered a major border obstacle. In order to tackle such obstacles, the European Commission issued a call in 2018 for a number of pilot projects looking to tackle common border obstacles. This call became known as the B-solutions initiative.

One of the projects selected was submitted by the Province of Limburg (NL) as lead applicant and carried out by the Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross border cooperation and Mobility / ITEM and proposed to create roadmaps and factsheets to increase the transparency of recognition procedures for regulated professions.

On this page, you will find the first roadmaps and factsheets developed in the context of the B-solutions project “Roadmap and factsheet for the recognition of qualifications for highly demanded professions”.

For the development of these documents, a three step approach was proposed:

1. Selecting highly demanded professions: ultimately, the professions of physiotherapist, second level nurse, and

secondary school teacher were selected. You can read more about the selection method here.

2. Development of roadmaps and factsheets: the documents have been developed on the basis of a literature

review, interviews and surveys with the competent authorities for recognition and are intended to inform first line

support service providers (e.g. Cross-border information points and job mediators) as well as citizens on how

the competent authorities assess qualifications. All roadmaps and factsheets are made available in four

languages (NL/DE/FR/EN) and can be consulted below.

Roadmaps & Factsheets NL

Algemene factsheet

Roadmap Fysiotherapeut