Legal Medicine in Europe — Quo vadis?

The Treaty of Rome from March 25th 1957, gives the highest priority to personal freedom, personal security and public health of the European citizen and, to the free migration of professionals within the European Community (EC). A fundamental prerequisite for the free migration is the comparability of qualifications and standards. Therefore, several EC directives (75/362, 75/363, 82/76, 89/594) are dealing with the recognition of medical degree certificates and post-graduate specialization schemes on a European level and, with guidelines on a national level. As pointed out by directive 75/363 only few differences exist between undergraduate courses at the multiplicity of EC medical faculties. Therefore, to achieve a good comparability, it is sufficient to establish some minimum requirements, such as the minimum duration of the undergraduate course (i.e. 6 years), while the organization of the teaching scheme remains the responsibility of the individual states. While no problems exist for general practitioners, who are recognized in all EC states, difficulties could arise in other disciplines, because there are minor or major differences between the national training standards. The necessary level of comparability is therefore evaluated and finally decided by different committees of the EC. These committees operate based on the Directives 75/364 and 75/365, coordinated under ref. 93/16 EC of 5.2. 1993 and aim at the protection of the professional level of doctors, observe the application of the EC rules and furthermore suggest possible modifications. There are 3 central Committees: (1) The UEMS (European Union of Medical Specialists) which reports to (2) the CP (Standing Committee of Doctors) as the representative organisation of all European doctors (a kind of Parliament). Both organisations are emanations from the Na-