Professional qualifications, recognition: doctor, dentist, architect...(amend. direct. 89/48/EEC, 92/51/EEC)

The Conciliation Committee reached agreement on the joint text of the proposal. The EP delegation was able to reach a compromise with the Council which was close to the original amendments on all the main issues: the importance of ongoing training for doctors was recognised in the text of the Directive and it was left to the Member States to decide on the arrangements for ensuring that such training enabled doctors to keep up with progress in medicine after the completion of their studies; as a general rule, the specific training course for general practitioners was extended from 2 to 3 years. Member States in which an obligatory training course in general medicine was also included in the basic studies would be able to count one year of this training as part of the 3-year course required for GPs (this option was available only to those 2 Member States in which the duration of this training was 2 years on 1 January 2001. A deadline was set for the issue of diplomas according to the new standards; the compromise included a joint declaration by the 3 institutions on the production of consolidated versions of the legislative text along with a timetable. It also included a declaration by the Commission that it would identify problems in the recognition of diplomas obtained outside the EU and propose appropriate solutions; the EP amendments of a linguistic nature and on setting deadlines for certain pharmacist studies were approved as they stood. The EP delegation felt that the EP position at 2nd reading was well reflected in the outcome of the conciliation and therefore recommended that the plenary adopt the joint text.�