The right of EU citizens to work and supply services in another EU member states may be considerably hindered if the legislative regulations of the respective states regulate a large number of professions. Therefore tendencies towards deregulation of professions emerge, that is towards abrogation of formal demands regarding the right to perform a profession, whereby it is neccessary to provide a due balance between public interest and competitiveness.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3975895
In recent years, the EU has made every effort to increase the transnational labour mobility. In its endeavours for the open national labour markets, deregulation of professions has been a frequent issue of several debates in the EU. The twenty seven EU Member States regulate around 4,700 different professions, which can be grouped into about 800 categories. In order to pursue work in a certain regulated profession, a worker has to meet certain requirements regarding his education, work experience, health, sometimes language knowledge and similar. There are several arguments why to regulate a profession, such as public safety and health, attainment of a higher level of services, better quality, intensified control etc. On the other hand such regulation can represent a legal and administrative barrier to the free movement of workers in everyday life. Setting a lot of requirements in order to have access to a profession can also hinder the possibility of foreign workers to work in the EU. In addition to this, a detailed regulation of professions can strongly (and negatively) affect the EU and/or EU member state's labour market. Therefore, a balance has to be set up between the public interest to have professions regulated and the economic interest to be a competitive environment, in which workers can easily work and move inside EU. Based on the described premises, the paper focuses at the possibilities for a systematic approach to the deregulation of professions as a national strategic policy and tries to identify the good practices in (de)regulating professions in EU member states. First, the definition of deregulation as a basis for the further analysis has to be investigated. Then, the analysis of EU legal environment regarding the regulation of professions has to be done. Third, in order to deregulate professions, their regulation has to be examinedfirst and compared between different states. As it is impossible and time consuming to analyse the regulation of approximately 800 professions in all 27 member states, we decided for a sample of 6 member states: Scandinavian (Finland and Denmark), Germany, Austria, Italy and Slovenia. In addition to this, we will analyse only professions in the field of tourism and construction industry, as these professions are regulated in almost every EU country. Finally we will focus on the possibilities for the deregulation of professions in EU member states. Starting from the analysis of regulated professions, we will try to identify several possibilities of setting deregulation of professions as a national strategic policy. Beside that a comparison among states will be done in order to give an answer which is an appropriate balance of (de)regulating professions (public v. economic interest) taking into consideration the EU and national specific environment.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4085207
In general, regulation of professions can be defined as a legal setting imposing barriers to entry and condition to perform a profession, the fulfilment of which can be checked when entering the labour market or during the performance of regulated profession. In the EU there are more than 4.700 regulated professions that can be further grouped in about 800 different categories. Slovenia is with approximately 300 regulated professions among the countries with the highest number of regulated professions. Regulation of professions becomes a problem when such regulation impedes (self)employment and imposes barriers to free movement of workers within EU. Professions in the field of tourism are heavily regulated. The aim of such regulation is protection of public health and safety, but on the other hand such regulation can negatively affect the competitiveness of tourism industry. The paper tries to answer the question, which professions should be deregulated in tourism industry and how to balance public interest and competitiveness in this process. Both national and foreign legislations regarding the (de)regulation of professions are analysed. The proposed possible solutions can be of important help in the process of changes of national policies in this area.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4123863