Service Industries: Qualifications

(asked on 30th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision for immediate mutual recognition of professional qualifications in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement on the ability for services exporters to operate in the EU.


Answered by
Paul Scully Portrait
Paul Scully
This question was answered on 15th January 2021

Within the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the UK and EU have agreed a framework under which both parties may agree arrangements on the recognition of professional qualifications (such as mutual recognition agreements) covering the UK and all 27 EU Member States. Once an arrangement is adopted under the TCA, UK professionals will be able to use the terms outlined in the arrangement to secure recognition of their professional qualifications, helping them to provide services within EU Member States.

While frameworks like this are conventional practice in free trade agreements, the Government successfully negotiated improvements to the EU’s original mutual recognition of professional qualification proposals. We have streamlined the process by which regulatory and professional authorities make recommendations to the Partnership Council, and we have opened further possibilities for the types of arrangements which can be adopted by the Council. This could result in more arrangements being agreed at a faster pace.

Over the coming years, professionals will be able to take advantage of any profession-specific EU-wide arrangement agreed under the FTA framework. As of 1 January 2021, UK-qualified professionals who wish to supply services in the EU should seek recognition of their qualifications according to the local laws and regulations of individual Member States.

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