Report of Project Group Meeting

Report of Project Group Meeting

Towards Mutual Recognition of Transport Professional Qualifications
TPT-WG18, Miyazaki, Japan, Monday 16 October 2000

The Project Group on Towards Mutual Recognition of Transport Professional Qualifications met from 09:30 to 12:30 on Monday 16 October 2000 at TPT?WG18, and was attended by representatives from Australia (project leader), Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the United States.

The meeting received a report on the outcomes of the survey conducted by Austraining International (Stage 3 of the Mutual Recognition project), heard a presentation by the consultant summarising the findings of the survey and considered a proposal to proceed to Stage 4 (the final stage) of the project.

Since the last meeting of the Mutual Recognition project group at TPT-WG17, the project progressed to the point where Austraining International prepared a draft final report analysing the outcomes of the survey on mutual recognition issues relating to the six transport professions identified in Stage One. The professions surveyed were: railway engineers; air traffic controllers; flight (cockpit) crew; licensed aircraft maintenance engineers; inter-modal/logistics managers; and long-distance truck drivers.

The meeting heard a detailed report by Austraining International in which the methodology, key findings and preliminary conclusions to be drawn from the report were discussed. The draft report provided to the meeting was document
(TPTWG 18/SCHRD/MRT/4)

The survey found that key factors and issues affecting mutual recognition between APEC economies included the following.

- The most commonly noted barriers to mutual recognition, across the different professions, were a lack of international standards and difficulties in verifying foreign licences, training, qualifications and registration requirements.

- Additionally, many respondents strongly emphasised the lack of confidence in other economies' licencing and training systems, particularly in the aviation professions.

- A few examples of existing cooperative practices in mutual recognition between APEC economies were found, for example within the Australia?New Zealand Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Agreement. Other models, from outside APEC, were investigated, in particular those used within the European Union.

- Incentives for mutual recognition include common land borders; trade routes; international standards harmonisation; and skilled labour shortages.

- Successful recognition arrangements have often applied to one profession and within that profession between two economies, or a regional grouping only.

The draft report concluded with an outline of some guiding principles for good practice in mutual recognition ? principles that are considered relevant and necessary regardless of whether the recognition is between economies, regions, professional organisations or licensing bodies.

During the course of the presentation, participants asked questions of the Austraining International consultant in order to better understand the survey findings. This process of discovery resulted in the following points being agreed by the meeting and would be reflected in this report of the project group and incorporated in the specification for Stage 4 work.

- The mutual recognition framework (for any particular profession) that will emerge from Stage 4 of the project will be an overarching framework within which individual APEC economies will be able to pursue bilateral or pluralateral recognition arrangements - it will not seek in the first instance to be a whole-of-APEC-encompassing framework.

- The important matter of the safety oversight arrangements must be included in the detail of mutual recognition agreements that govern transport professions which have a safety dimension, for example air traffic controllers.

- It was agreed that mutual recognition of certain professional qualifications would be made easier in some instances (for some economies) if effort went into harmonising the standards for training which underpin these professions.

The content of the draft report was then agreed as a sufficient basis to proceed to the next stage of the project (Stage 4 - final stage). The above comments, and any further minor edits, would be made by the consultant after participants at the meeting had had an opportunity to read the report in more detail. It was agreed that comments would be provided to Australia (David Smith) within three weeks of the meeting (by 6 November).

The meeting considered a proposal (TPTWG 18/SCHRD/MRT/3) for the project overseer (Australia) to employ a limited tender process to choose a consultant for Stage 4 (final) work of the project 'Towards Mutual Recognition of Transport Professional Qualifications'.

The meeting endorsed Australia's proposal to proceed to limited tender for Stage 4, as outlined in the aforementioned paper. And agreed that further work, to be undertaken by the project overseer (with the assistance of input from meeting participants and members of the project steering committee) was required to refine the scope of Stage 4.

The 'Towards Mutual Recognition' project group proposes that the Human Resources Development Steering Committee accept the content of this meeting report and recommend to Plenary that:

1. TPT-WG agree the draft final report of Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the 'Towards Mutual Recognition of Transport Professional Qualifications' project be endorsed as the basis for proceeding to Stage Four of the project; and

2. TPT-WG agree that the project overseer (Australia) employ a limited tender process to select a consultant for Stage 4 of the project, once Australia, in consultation with the project steering committee, has agreed the detail for the scope of stage 4 work (which will include the decisions of the TPT-WG18 project group meeting as contained in this report)