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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.

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 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.

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.

Law researcher and scientific coordinator at the ITEM Expertise centre Dr. Alexander Hoogenboom featured Observant Magazine on whether the EU only produces annoying regulation and why that misconception continues to exist.

ITEM’s scientific coordinator, dr. Alexander Hoogenboom, has been awarded ‘first place’ in the ELFA 2016 doctoral thesis competition on European law for his thesis 'Balancing Student Mobility Rights and National Higher Education Autonomy in the European Union'.  The award was presented at ELFA's Annual General Meeting and Conference 2017 in Brno, Czech Republic.

After the successful completion of the Cross-border impact assessment in 2016, its dossiers are being being followed up on and the subjects of the 2017 assessment have been determined.