Luxembourg’s system of checking qualifications of EU nationals moving to work in the country often involves excessive and unnecessary requests for additional paperwork, a report by the bloc’s budget watchdog has found.

The Grand Duchy was one of four countries assessed by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in its report on the EU’s attempts to streamline the recognition of professional qualifications, published on Monday.

An EU directive, adopted in 2005, was intended to speed up the process and avoid additional red tape for citizens seeking to take advantage of the bloc’s freedom of movement.

However, there remain many obstacles for those wishing to work or set up a business, the ECA report concluded, with different requirements being imposed by national authorities.

Luxembourg, where there were almost 250 “regulated” professions – one of the highest numbers in the EU – auditors said the country was non-compliant with several aspects of the bloc’s 2005 directive.

The Grand Duchy had not fully implemented a system to ensure that citizens who wish to have their profession recognised abroad have access to an online procedure, while the country had also made excess requests for documents from applicants above and beyond EU requirements.

Excessive requirements

Other countries were similarly found to be in breach of the directive, the ECA report noted.

Luxembourg demanded sworn translations from a registered translator for all professions, auditors said, imposing additional burdens on EU citizens.

The role of Luxembourg’s Council of State, which provides opinions on draft legislation, played a positive role in keeping a check on whether additional requirements were really necessary, auditors said.

“Since the introduction in Luxembourg of an obligatory proportionality test for legislation, the Council of State has requested that a proportionality test should be attached to the bills sent for assessment,” the report noted. “In 2022 and 2023 the Council of State blocked two new Luxembourgish regulations concerning access to healthcare professions because of unsatisfactory proportionality tests.”

Luxembourg had by far the highest level of “partial access” of qualifications of any EU country, which allows “citizens not qualified for all parts of a regulated profession in the host member state to pursue it partially”, particularly for professions such healthcare, on which the Grand Duchy is heavily dependent on cross-border workers.

The vast majority of requests for recognition of professional qualifications by Luxembourg authorities between 2017 and 2021 were approved, with around 10% rejected, data in the report showed.

Delays on Guichet

Luxembourg’s website for administrative procedures, Guichet, was found to involve lengthy delays in checks on temporary workers in sectors posing a health or safety risk if professional qualifications are found to be lacking, such as civil engineers.

“This procedure should be quick, generally one month. However, our testing of guichet.lu (the Luxembourgish point of single contact) revealed that the Luxembourg authorities apply reverse rules,” the ECA said.

“They [Luxembourg authorities] first require citizens to obtain a ‘standard’ RPQ [recognition of professional qualifications] decision within the same deadlines as for establishment, a process that can take up to four months. Only after this is the applicant allowed to send the declaration for temporary mobility,” auditors found.

In general, EU countries “fail to monitor the length of recognition procedures on a regular basis”, the auditors found, and also did not consult a bloc-wide alert system, which flags professionals with a record of misconduct or criminal convictions.

“To protect EU citizens, we believe that the alert mechanism should be integrated into the recognition procedure for those professions dealing with health and safety, and those requiring integrity – particularly when dealing with minors,” said Stef Blok, the ECA member responsible for the audit.

“A nurse or mechanic who wants to work in another member state can be discouraged by the process of having their professional qualifications recognised: it can be a long and excessively bureaucratic process,” Blok added.