Getting foreign qualifications recognised in Germany should soon be easier

A newly approved draft law should make it easier for international residents with certain healthcare qualifications to have their qualifications recognised in Germany.

Germany wants to attract international healthcare workers

Federal Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) has announced that the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition government has approved a draft law which would make it easier for international healthcare workers to have their qualifications recognised in Germany.

The law will benefit doctors, dentists, pharmacists and midwives who have qualified in non-EU countries. Currently, non-EU migrants who are trained in these professions must take an equivalence exam before they can start working in Germany; this will be replaced with “direct knowledge testing”, i.e. a practical test.

Warken hopes the new system means migrant healthcare workers will not have to wait for months or even years before they can begin practising their profession in Germany. Moving away from paper documents and post, the qualification recognition process will also be digitised and consolidated across the federal states.

The draft law outline added that the digitisation process should save almost 16 million euros per year in administrative costs. The reform must first be approved by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat before it can be adopted.

Germany depends on migrant workers for the economy’s future

Already in a record high worker shortage, as birth rates decline and 4,7 million existing employees are expected to move into retirement between 2024 and 2028, Germany desperately needs more people to keep its economy from further spiralling.

The German healthcare system is among the sectors worst impacted by the worker shortage. “Alongside attractive traineeship working conditions, we need qualified foreign workers to secure the future of the healthcare system,” Warken said, announcing the draft law.

In 2024, the number of qualification recognition applications reached a record high in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 71.000 applications were submitted, a 14 percent increase compared to 2023.

But the German government is also bending rightwards on migration policy as the AfD becomes more popular and pressure mounts. In September, the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition adopted the EU’s restrictive asylum programme into national law. Last week saw the fast-track citizenship law scrapped, and border checks have been ramped up despite police saying they are financially unsustainable.