Five years on from the end of the Brexit transition period and hundreds of UK-trained doctors are still “in limbo”, waiting for their professional qualifications to be recognised, the French parliament has heard.
Doctors who have done their medical studies in an EU or EEA country can have their professional qualifications recognised in France – but since Brexit that no longer includes the UK.
British-trained doctors must now follow the lengthy, complicated and expensive process of all non-EU medics who wish to practise in France – the ‘autorisation individuelle d’exercice’, which involves up to two years of hospital training and retaking exams to prove their skills.
Caught up in this are “several hundred” doctors, according to the Association de Médecins Franco-Britannique – some are British doctors who had moved to France, but others are French who had chosen to do their training in the UK due to the high quality of qualifications offered.
Five years on, many of them are still barred from working in France – despite the shortage of medics in many parts of the country.
A bill tabled in the Assemblée nationale by MP Vincent Caure should, if passed, end the impasse and allow these doctors to work again.
It is, however, specific to those who began their medical training before December 31st 2020 – and therefore doesn’t provide a post-Brexit pathway for future British medics to move to France.
Health professionals trained abroad may also be required to prove their competence in the French language.
A Franco-British dual national doctor living in Drôme told Le Figaro that he has to return to work in the UK, leaving his family behind in France for months at a time, because he can no longer work in France.
He said: “The local GP practice wants to recruit me: the doctors are going to retire, with no successors. But they’re forcing me to give up my UK registration [and go through the French procedure], which would leave me unemployed for months, with no guarantee of being accepted in France.”
In Pau, south-west France, a British GP who moved to France after marrying a Frenchman, told the paper: “Our children go to school here, we’ve bought a house and I give dance lessons to the village children. We are fully integrated.”
However she cannot practise medicine in France without giving up her British licence, which is essential to her current activity, which involves working remotely for patients in the UK.
“That would mean losing my main source of income, with no guarantee that I would then be able to work as a doctor here.”
Vincent Caure’s bill aims to create a fast-track system for doctors trained in the UK before 2020, which would allow them to have their qualifications recognised in France under a similar system to that used for EU-trained medics.
“It’s an unfair situation, and also damaging for France because it encourages these doctors to stay in the UK or practice in other countries,” he said. “When you consider the desperate shortage of doctors in many areas of France.”
His bill has received broad cross-party support and the government has committed to fastr-tracking it, should it be passed in both the Assemblée and the Senate.
Although the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement safeguarded many of the rights of Brits who were living in the EU before Brexit, professional qualifications was one area it did not cover.
Some people were able to get their professional qualifications recognised by applying before the cut-off date in 2020, but those who were not able to do so are often forced to start from scratch and retrain in order to be able to exercise their profession in their country of residence.