Professions – Keeping control
WORKERS, MAR 2006 ISSUE
Last year, professional associations representing nurses, doctors, pharmacists, vets, various therapists, architects, lawyers, tourist guides, and many others, forced the European Commission to "allow" national governments to determine the level of qualifications of what the EU calls "migrant professionals" (incoming professionals crossing into another country to work). This amendment to the main services directive is called the Recognition of Professional Qualifications Directive.
Far from helping to open up the market in services to competition, as the Commission claims, those workers concerned took a small but important step towards asserting their national sovereignty. They now have to persuade their governments that they, the professionals, not the government, know what standards are best for their profession. In most cases, these will be higher than the EU requires.
Professionals have a task ahead to educate government and unions about continuing threats to the quality of the services they provide. Government ministers still sound like spokesmen for the employers, bemoaning "restrictive practices" and professional rates of pay. Meanwhile the TUC tries to square the circle, advocating protection of standards on the one hand, but free movement of labour on the other.
Leaders of unions and professional associations cannot have a foot in both camps. If they really want to protect their members' interests, they must fight for their members' right to shape the future of their own professions. Taken to its logical conclusion, there must be no more talk of the EU "allowing powers" or "conferring competences" on national authorities. Those authorities must seize back power for themselves – for good!