Internal Market Information System (IMI)

What is IMI used for in recognition procedures?

When a German licensing authority wants to know whether a Romanian diploma is genuine and comes from the stated university, it does not write to Bucharest by letter. It submits the query through IMI, and the office there responds in the same system. Pre-formulated questions and machine translation bridge the language barrier. The platform is operated by the European Commission, which also provides a helpdesk and training. Registered users include ministries, state authorities, chambers, and municipalities.

What is the legal basis?

Since December 2012, Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012, the IMI Regulation, has applied. It governs responsibilities, data protection, and deletion periods. Directive 2005/36/EC links to it in several places: Articles 4b to 4e for the European Professional Card, Article 56 for administrative cooperation, and Article 56a for the alert mechanism. Beyond professional recognition, IMI also covers services, the posting of workers, patient rights, and parts of data protection supervision.

What does this mean for graduates from EU countries?

Those who completed their studies in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, or the Baltic states rarely notice IMI directly, but feel its effect in processing times. If the response from the foreign office comes promptly, the procedure runs smoothly; if it is delayed, the medical licence is delayed without anything the German authority can do about it. For degrees from Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina, IMI is not available, since neither state participates in the system; there, authenticity verification runs through embassies and universities.

Limits of the system

IMI speeds up the exchange of information but does not replace a decision. Authorities respond at varying speeds, and the deadline under Article 51 only begins to run from the time documents are complete. Personal data is subject to strict deletion rules, so information cannot be retrieved indefinitely. Applicants have no direct access to the system and therefore do not learn when a query was sent abroad or how long the response has been pending there. Information about the status of one's own file must therefore be obtained from the competent office in the host state.