Asked by: Lord Trees (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications in the Brexit negotiations.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
As part of the Withdrawal Agreement, we have agreed the continued recognition of qualifications for residents and frontier workers, where recognition decisions were received or where recognition procedures were ongoing, before the end of the implementation period. This will cover qualifications recognised under the MRPQ directive, lawyers practising under host title and approved statutory auditors.
There are a number of issues which the Commission deemed to be outside the scope of withdrawal negotiations, including important rights such as home title practise for lawyers and the status of licenses and certificates. We will seek to reach an agreement with the EU that will cover these outstanding issues in the negotiations on the future economic partnership.
The Prime Minister has been clear that we want UK professional qualifications to continue to be recognised across the EU in the future, and vice versa. This makes sense, given that they are already recognised. The March European Council agreed guidelines for negotiations on our future relationship, which reference the desire of the EU27 to include ambitious provisions on the recognition of qualifications. This is a useful starting point for our negotiations on the future economic partnership.