CEPI - European Association of Real Estate Professions

The revised Directive 2013/55/EU on the recognition of professional qualifications was published in the Official Journal of the EU on 28 December 2013 and will enter into force 20 days thereafter. EU Member States will have two years within which to transpose the Directive into national law, so the deadline is 18 January 2016.

The Directive contains two innovations which are very significant for CEPI, the European Professional Card and the common training principles, both of which will be the subject of implementing acts by the European Commission which is now creating a focus group to progress work on the issue of a professional card for various professions. We are pleased to say that CEPI has been invited to participate in this focus group which will meet for the first time on 31 January 2014.

The European Commission published a call for expressions of interest in the European Professional Card on 18 October 2013 to which CEPI responded with confirmation of its interest in the creation of a European Professional Card for real estate professionals. The Commission will start work on the professional card by assessing a first cluster of professions including estate agents. We look forward to advancing this important initiative which has great potential for the real estate professions. In particular we are convinced that the European Professional Card, together with the potential to establish common training principles which would lead to automatic recognition of qualifications, could represent a real added value for professionals wishing to offer services cross-border. 

The full text of the Directive is available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:354:0132:0170:en:PDF