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When professionals and students move to other countries to either work or study there, they may need recognition of their qualifications. Different instruments and procedures exist depending on the purpose of mobility. Despite the fact that such instruments mainly aim at facilitating mobility, bottlenecks may nonetheless arise in practice. ITEM briefly sets out some exemplary bottlenecks including suggested solutions related to the recognition of qualifications following from their casuistry and research.

De ITEM quick scan maakt een eerste inschatting mogelijk in hoeverre een onderwerp een verdere beoordeling vergt wat mogelijke grenseffecten betreft. ITEM heeft de quick scan toegepast op beleidsvoornemens die in het Nederlandse Regeerakkoord van 2017 worden genoemd. 

Can certain rules affect the daily lives of border residents? By means of an impact assessment, the impact of certain guidelines can be measured. The ITEM Expertise Centre is committed to mapping the impact of legislation and policies for border regions. In this context, ITEM published its annual Cross-border Impact Assessment 2017 on Friday, November 10, 2017.

Martin Unfried from the Institute for Transnational and Euregional Cross-border cooperation and Mobility / ITEM of Maastricht University was present at the launch conference 'Boosting Growth and Cohesion in EU Border Regions' of the European Commission in Brussels. During the event Unfried gave background information about ITEM’s annual Cross-border Impact Assessment, which was put forward by the Commission as a good practice in regards to the improvement of the legislative process within the European Union.

In an official document of the Commission’s Regional Policy titled Communication “Boosting Growth and Cohesion in EU Border Regions”, the Cross-border Impact Assessment of the ITEM Expertise centre of Maastricht University was put forward as a good practice by the European Commission in order to facilitate the improvement of the legislative process within the European Union.

The thesis ‘Balancing Student Mobility Rights and National Higher Education Autonomy in the European Union’ by Dr. Alexander Hoogenboom, connected to the ITEM Expertise centre and the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, will be issued by publishing house Brill in the series ‘Nijhoff Studies in European Union Law’ in October 2017.

The Ministry of the Interior has written a response to the report ‘Cross-border workers in Europe’ (Grenswerkers in Europa) in a Letter to Parliament. Furthermore the minister addresses the progress of cross-border cooperation.

ITEM’s Marcus Meyer and Thomas Biermeyer have won a Jean Monnet grant on the topic of cross-border mobility of companies in the EU and EEA. This project supplements a tender won by Thomas and Marcus earlier this year from ETUI for a three-year project on the same topic. The Jean Monnet grant allows to extend the project’s monitoring timespan to 20 years, covering the period 2000-2020 and organizing a high-level conference on this topic in Brussels.

On 12 July 2017 the defence of PhD Thesis of Dr Hannelore Niesten (joint doctorate UHasselt/UM) took place. The joint doctorate of Dr Hannelore Niesten was carried out under supervisors Prof. Dr. Elly Van de Velde (UHasselt) and Dr. Marjon Weerepas (Maastricht University). The University of Hasselt pubslished an article about the PhD thesis regarding the tax barriers of free movement of persons in the EU.

The Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom relations has asked ITEM to research the cross-border mobility of specialized nurses in some Dutch health care institutions. The goal of the research is to find out about the status and influence of quality standards and the actors involved, as well as to provide solutions to facilitate the cross-border mobility of specialized nurses while maintaining high quality health care.