Mary Henry (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. It is appropriate that we are debating this matter this evening because, as he will be aware, the European Commission has given a warm welcome to the ten candidate countries, indicated that they have fulfilled a sufficient number of the Chapters they were required to fulfil and stated that all that is needed is a "Yes" vote by the Irish in the referendum on the Nice treaty. I am an enthusiastic supporter of the treaty.

The matter I wish to raise involves the internal market which, we hope, will be enlarged after the Nice referendum and consequently will have even greater importance. We complain frequently about bureaucrats in Brussels making all the decisions. Unless we take part in the decision-making process, however, it will be quite impossible for us to influence any of the decisions that are made. That is why I want the Minister for Health and Children to address this issue immediately.

The Commission, in its proposed Directive COM (2002) 119 final, intends to change a reliable, well understood system for the recognition of the medical qualifications of member states in other EU states to a system which will become cumbersome and discriminatory. As it stands, any doctor qualified and registered in a member state has the automatic right to practise in another member state. This right will be severely curtailed by COM (2002) 119 final.

The Doctors Directive 93/16/EC, last modified by Directive 2001/19/EC, guarantees automatic mutual recognition of qualifications between the states. A total of 52 medical specialties are recognised by this directive, some of which are common to all states – 17 in all – but others are recognised by two or more states. The new directive will restrict automatic recognition to the 17 specialties common to all states. All the others will be placed within a new general directive system which will be governed by member states. This will create a new two-tier system of doctors' qualifications. Why, when the EU is striving for an even closer union, is the Commission seeking to divide European medicine?