
The government is preparing to launch a complete review of the rules that determine access to hundreds of professions, as part of the European Union accession negotiations.
Through a draft decision of the Ministry of Education, the National Action Plan for Transparency and Proportionality of Criteria for the Exercise of Regulated Professions is expected to be approved, a document that will serve as the basis for the inventory and analysis of 323 regulated professions in the country. These are already in the consultation phase.
The initiative is part of the commitments that Albania has undertaken within the framework of Chapter Group 2 “Internal Market” and aims to meet the requirements of Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications. According to the report, the final criterion requires that “Albania has adopted and submitted to the European Commission a list of regulated professions… specifying the activities covered by each profession, as well as the relevant justifications for their regulation.”
The process is not limited to drawing up a list. The plan foresees five main steps: identifying all professions that are regulated by law or administrative practice; defining the activities and titles protected for each profession; testing whether the current restrictions are proportionate; approving and sending the official list to the European Commission; and publishing and periodically updating it.
The document states that the objective is to create a unified system for identifying, analyzing and monitoring regulated professions, ensuring greater transparency and alignment with European standards. In this context, the government also aims to “systematically identify and consolidate the national list of 323 regulated professions, spread across 11 central regulatory authorities”, as a basis for reporting to the European Commission.
The plan also foresees the establishment of a national electronic database of regulated professions, which will function as a single point of information for citizens, professionals and institutions, while in the second phase it will also be connected to regional and European Union databases.
In practice, the review will affect a wide range of professions from law, health and engineering, to education, transport, finance, tourism and insurance, creating for the first time a complete national inventory of licensed professions and the criteria that justify their regulation.