European professional card

European professional card

It is an electronic document certifying that the person completed all conditions required to provide services on a temporary and occasional basis in a host Member State or that professional qualification would be recognized to be established in the host Member State.

European professional card accelerates the recognition of professional qualifications of specialists wishing to pursue a regulated profession in the other Member States. It is issued through an internal market information system (IMI) and is equivalent to a document of recognition of professional qualification. If the person wishing to establish himself in the other Member State or to provide services in a regulated profession temporarily had to travel to the aspired Member State, to look for a competent authority, to submit documents, and after it was discovered that some documents are missing, had to return to the home Member State and obtain required documents – starting from January 2016, he/she will be able to do online by applying a competent authority of the home Member State.

A person has created his/her account and uploaded all necessary documents to the system generated by the European Commission automatically submits his/her application for a European professional card to an appropriate competent authority of the Republic of Lithuania, which after checking all the data transmits it to an appropriate competent authority of the Member State. Competent authorities of the host Member State checks a person’s professional qualification and adopts an appropriate decision: to issue/ not to issue a European professional card or to apply compensation measure.

European professional card is not a plastic card. It is an electronic document certifying that professional qualification was recognized for a person or that a person satisfied all the conditions required to provide services temporarily.

Legal basis.

Main provisions regarding the European professional card are established in the Directive 2013/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 November 2013, which partly replaces the Directive 2005/36/EC regarding recognition of professional qualifications (Points 4a – 4e, Paragraph 5, Article 1 of the Directive 2013/55/EU), and in Article 5 of the Law No. XII-2233 on the amendment of the Law on Recognition of Regulated Professional Qualifications of the Republic of Lithuania.

Technical aspects and other procedural provisions regarding the European professional card are established in the Enforcement Regulation 2015/983 of the Commission of 24 June 2015 regarding the procedures of issue of European professional card and warning mechanism application under the Directive 2005/36/EC of the European Parliament and the Council.

Professions for which European professional card can be issued

At present, the European professional card is issued for five professions:

1. General care nurses;
2. Pharmacists;
3. Physiotherapists;
4. Mountain guides;
5. Real estate agents.

All these professions meet the conditions established in the Directive 2013/55/EU.

• there is significant mobility or potential for  significant mobility in the profession concerned;
• there is sufficient interest expressed by the relevant stakeholders;
• the profession or the education and training geared to the pursuit of the profession is regulated in a significant number of Member States.

In the future, European professional card is planned to be applied to other professions, as well.

How to apply for a European professional card?

To apply for European professional card, first of all, you have to log on to ECAS – European Citizen Action Service of the European Commission. If you do not have a username and password yet, you will have to create them. The link for logging on to ECAS is here. 

Then, you will have to spend several minutes for entering personal data and contact information into your profile of European professional card.

Upon entering all profile information, you can create an application, upload scanned copies of required documents and send them to a competent authority of the Republic of Lithuania.

• Using the procedure of the issue of European professional card
• Verification of the validity of European professional card

Useful links

More information about the European professional card is available here:

• European professional card – Your Europewebpage 
• European professional card – DG GROW webpage 
• Video 

Contacts in the Republic of Lithuania

Contacts regarding the issue of European professional card:

• for nurses, physiotherapists – Chief specialist of the Division of Management of Health Care Human Resources of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania
• for pharmacists – Chief specialist of the Division of Pharmacies and Pharmacy Specialist of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania
• for mountain guides, real estate agents– Chief specialist of the Division of Human Resources Development of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania