Czech Republic authorities force unlawful membership of professional chambers
Hurrah! The Czech Republic finally approved a trustworthy government. After `merely´ seven months, we made it! What's not so encouraging is that the new government also doesn't know how to deal with some perennial problems — those hindrances that have slowed Czech healthcare's development and reforms for years.
A deep need for a circumstantially restructured healthcare system has been prevented by problems that began with missing funding and progressed to insufficient insurance legislation - or maybe it was a pure lack of political will to do something.
This time, a new European-size problem emerged – an inability to incorporate EU rules into the Czech Medical Chamber (CMC) and Czech Dental Chamber (CDC) legislations.
Czech law requires foreign doctors and dentists wanting to work in this country to become members of Czech professional medical chambers although, under EU legislation, practitioners should need only a certificate from their home country. The requirement for being a chamber member is really absurd - it applies also to those physicians or dentists simply visiting the country, not to mention the fact that all CMC/CDC members must pay membership fees. In other words, foreign doctors staying in the Czech Republic end up as double-members with double-money paid. Which ain’t really too fair. The situation should have been corrected by a revision of professional chambers last year.
Unfortunately, Czech President Klaus vetoed that law, stating there were too many appendices to it that made the whole situation unclear. In the last weeks of January the European Court of Justice ruled that the Czech Republic is breaching EU law by not acknowledging doctors’ diplomas and certificates issued by other Member States. For the moment, Czech Republic must pay court expenses, and soon, the European Commission will decide further steps to be taken against the Republic.
Follow up: www.lkcr.cz
http://www.dent.cz/cs/csk
08.03.2007
