The scope of the healthcare exemption in the Services Directive

Abstract: The goal for this thesis was to understand the scope of the healthcare exemption in the Directive 2006/123/EC on Services in the Internal Market (Services Directive) as it applies to national legislation/authorities of the membership states (MS) of EU. The basis for this thesis is the Services Directive; this Directive has certain exceptions in regards to the subject matter. Therefore, for a deeper understanding of the exception of the rule, first the Services Directive being the main rule is studied in a detailed manner, then followed by an in depth analysis of the exception. To understand the subject matter of this thesis I researched several different sources of EU aquis to establish EU’s definition of the scope for the terms “healthcare”, pharmaceutical services” , “healthcare professional” and “regulated professions “. Several court cases from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) were used to establish how these terms were interpreted and applied in practice. This led me to pick out inter alia the Services Directive, Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications (PQD) and Directive 2011/24 on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare (PRD) to be the key ones for the purpose of this thesis to see what their effect is and how they interact and influence each other in practice. My conclusions are that there are four main accumulative steps that have to be in place for the Healthcare exemption to apply. If these steps are not fulfilled the service provided will be fully under the SD, unless a Venturini situation amounting to a public health concern is present. It would be helpful with either further guidance from ECJ case law or guidelines from the Commission on the subject to confirm or deny the accuracy of the findings presented here.