The IMI Network

1. What is the Internal Market Information System (IMI)?
2. Why do we need an Internal Market Information System?
3. What benefits does IMI deliver?
4. How does IMI work?
5. Strategy for expanding and developing IMI
6. IMI in the future

• IMI is a multilingual electronic tool for exchange of information between Competent Authorities throughout the European Economic Area
• IMI is developed by the European Commission in partnership with the Member States
• IMI was financed and set up as a „Project of common interest“ under the IDABC Work Programme (2005-2009)
• IMI facilitates communication between public administrations at national, regional and local level since 2008
• Competent Authorities of the 30 EEA Member States can contact each other via IMI

• COMPETENT AUTHORITIES AND NATIONAL EXPERTS
  • CA DATA
• QUESTION SET GENERATOR
  • QUESTIONS
• LANGUAGE SUPPORT
  • Information exchange

Making legislation work better for citizens and business:

• Free movement of goods, services, people and capital depends on a complex mixture of rules (EU and national level)
• Ensuring compliance with the rules is the responsibility of public authorities at local, regional and national level across the European Economic Area (EEA)
• Public authorities need to cooperate closely to ensure that the full benefits of the legal framework are delivered for citizens and businesses

• Confidence and trust between administrations can only be established on the basis of contact and easy access to information
• However there are many practical barriers to cooperation, such as language or administrative structures
• Administrative cooperation will not happen spontaneously – it needs support, particularly in a larger more diverse Europe

• IMI does not impose additional obligations on Member States beyond those already contained in internal market legislation
• Revised Directive on Professional Qualifications (2005/36/EC)
  • Article 8 - Administrative cooperation
  • Article 50 - Documentation and formalities
  • Article 56 - Competent Authorities
• Services Directive (2006/123/EC)
  • Articles 28-36 in particular articles 34.1, 36 and recital 112

• For Member States
• For Competent Authorities
• For migrating professionals
• For European Commission

1. Easy to use and flexible
2. No new legal obligations
3. A single system to manage

1. Easy access to information
2. More transparent process
3. Greater efficiency

1. More transparent process
2. Faster response by administrations

1. Lower costs, Faster development
2. Easy to support new legislative areas

1. Exchange of information at all levels of administration across EU becomes possible
2. Secure and reliable system which allows complex problems to be dealt with quickly
3. Single system to support different pieces of Internal Market legislation

• European Commission
• Competent Authorities (CAs)
• IMI Coordinators (NIMIC, SDIMIC, DIMIC)

1. develops, maintains and runs IMI (data centre Luxembourg)
2. provides translations
3. central Helpdesk

1. find relevant Competent Authorities in another Member State
2. exchange information with this CA in other Member State
3. administer data and users of their authority in IMI

1. technical/ administrative coordination, e.g. registration and support of CAs (help desk)
2. functional coordination – by choice
3. act as CA and exchange information through IMI with other CAs

IMI supports cooperation between MS administrations by addressing the following problems:

• Language barriers – 23 official EU languages
• Lack of clearly identified partners in other Member States (MS)
• Different administrative structures and cultures
• Lack of administrative procedures for crossborder cooperation
• Management of 351 bilateral relationships in EU-27

1. IMI works in all official EU languages
2. Identifying partners in IMI
3. Flexibility for MS to organise themselves as they wish
   • Competent Authorities may contact each other directly via IMI
   • A MS may decide to direct all requests via the Coordinator of the CA
   • A MS may decide to direct all replies via the Coordinator of the CA
   • It is possible that both requests and replies are sent via Coordinators

1. Member States have agreed the flow of information for a request in IMI
   • The simple workflow of a request in IMI consists of 4 steps only
2. Member States have agreed on the questions which can be asked in IMI
3. Member States can monitor IMI to make sure that replies are on time
4. MS manage single relationship with the IMI network instead of 31 bilateral relationships ¹⁾

• IMI was launched in November 2007 for the registration of Competent Authorities
  • Test IMI application with real data and real information exchanges
  • Put in place organisational structures in Member States for large-scale roll-out
  • Set up the necessary support structures for the project

• Since February 2008 IMI has been supporting the exchange of information required by the revised Professional Qualifications Directive (2005/36/EC)
  • pilot project for the 4 professions, including 2 sectoral professions
• Extending IMI to other Professions
  • preference for the 5 additional sectoral professions and 2 other professions (December 2008)
  • preference for 20 additional professions with significant migration rates (October 2009)
  • preference for 4 professions regulated in more Member States (October 2010)
  • general opening of system to other professions (since May 2012)

• Integration of the Regulated Professions Database (RegProf)