Qualified response

The question of how engineers will be able to move around the various European Union member states is still uncertain, following the rejection of the Commission's proposals for recognition of professional qualifications.

The European Parliament has also thrown out proposals which, according to the Engineering Council (ECUK), would have an adverse effect on the mobility and status of UK-educated engineers.

The proposed directive covers several professions, including doctors and other health practitioners, architects and engineers. It is intended to simplify the rules governing the qualifications professionals need to work in other states of the EU by setting out a 'common platform' for each profession - the minimum requirements which an applicant must meet without being required to undertake further training or gain extra qualifications in the host state.

The Commission modelled its original proposals on the European Engineers Register, more commonly known as EUR ING, which is run by the European Federation of National Engineering Associations (FEANI). However, according to ECUK, these proposals 're-opened old anxieties amongst some Mediterranean countries, particularly Italy, who have never really accepted the system of recognition embodied in the FEANI register.'

As a result of this, several amendments were introduced into the draft during the European Parliament debate. Some of these, says ECUK, would have left UK engineers at a disadvantage, because of the relatively short duration of British engineering degree courses and the emphasis placed on on-the-job training before professional registration.

When it came to the final vote of the Parliament, the amendments were rejected by over two to one. 'We are hopeful that the scale of the rejection means that a discriminatory 'section for engineers' will not be reintroduced at a later stage,' comments Jim Birch, head of international recognition at ECUK.

One of the British MEPs involved in the debate, Malcom Harbour, is himself a professional engineer. Harbour believes that it is important to retain the system which divides professional qualifications into five levels: an attestation of competence from the engineer's home state; a certificate of training at a secondary level, supplemented by a professional course; a diploma from a post-secondary course of between one and three years; a university-level diploma from an 'intermediate' course of three to four years; and a diploma from a higher education institution from a higher training course of at least four years.

FEANI points out that what is thought of as a 'professional engineer' would correspond only to levels four and five, with a level five being equivalent to a three-years-plus-two-years Bachelors/Masters degree course. 'Professional engineers are entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining acceptable standards of public safety and environmental protection,' it says.

'To guarantee that all practising professional engineers are competent to do so requires a formation process that includes an adequate process of university or equivalent education. This could not be guaranteed by accepting lower levels of education as valid.'