REPORT FROM THE EU MATTERS WORKING GROUP OF THE ER-WCPT
ON STATISTICS OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
DETAILS ABOUT REGULATED PROFESSIONS

European Region of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT)
European Union Matters WG (April 2010)

 

Competent Authorities of EU/ EEA Member States and Switzerland are required to provide data on EU Migration. Initially data were collected in blocks of two years until 2007 when annual returns were required.

Link to the EU Commission statistics http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/qualifications/regprof/index.cfm?fuseaction=profession.regProfs&profId=1250

 

The tables list all countries in the EU/EEA and Switzerland. Physiotherapy statistics are presented by country of origin of the qualification and by the types of decisions made by Competent Authority of the host country. Decisions may be:

 

·         Automatic positive

·         Automatic negative

·         Positive after compensation measures (adaptation/ test of competence)

 

Nine Member States had returned statistics for 2008 as at January 2010.

 

Table 1 below indicates the year of the most recent statistics received from 22 Member States from 2008 back to the year 1997/98 when the EU statistics collection system began.

 

Table 1- Most recent statistics by Member State under ‘Physiotherapist’

 

Competent Authorities from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia, and Switzerland have not yet returned data.

 

 

 

Without complete information, analysis of migration trends can only give a very general picture Comparisons between data sets for different years (see Annex 1) are difficult because of:

 

·         Change in time periods for collection of statistics

·         Enlargement of the EU which increases the potential for migration

·         Incomplete data collection

 

Two other points should be noted. Firstly the number of successful registrants may not necessarily equate with the number who secure jobs in the host country.

Secondly Directive 2005/36/EC provides for recognition for physiotherapists to work on a 'temporary or occasional basis', but the statistics do not separate out this decision category. No comment can therefore be made about trends concerning temporary workers.

 

 

The following section provides a breakdown of the numbers of decisions made in each decision category for the nine member states who have made returns for 2008, compared with the same countries' returns for 2007.

 

It is clear that 'positive automatic' decisions represent the vast majority of outcomes of the recognition process taken by the host country and that the proportion of such decisions has increased over the years since statistics were first collected in 1997. See Annex 1 for summaries of the decisions made and the number of host countries involved for the whole collection period -1997/8 to 2008.

 

The 2008 statistics compared with those of 2007 are as follows:

 

·         Automatic positive decisions (see table 2)

·         Automatic negative 15

·         Compensation measures:

Positive after adaptation   11    Negative after adaptation 0

Positive after aptitude test 5      Negative after aptitude test 0

·         Appeals 2

·         Decisions pending 45

 

Table 2 Automatic positive decisions by country 2007-2008

 

The bar charts in Annex 2 show the migration inflows and outflows for each host country, gross change and the net result in terms of an overall gain or reduction in numbers of physiotherapists.