A Silk Road for Professional Qualifications? EU Models of Integration and their Potential in Sino–EU Relations

The tension between the public interest to regulate professions, and the economic rationales to open up markets has long since been an issue within the EU. This has resulted in a variety of regulatory models to accommodate the interests and values at stake. Such models differ in terms of not only their impact on national autonomy, but also their effectiveness in actually achieving access to markets in other EU Member States. In this Chapter, we explore how these competing interests have shaped the EU’s legal frameworks for the recognition of professional qualifications. We will see that a range of regulatory strategies have been applied to design such frameworks. The next element of our analysis is based on the assumption that we may be able to draw lessons from the EU’s internal regulatory strategies to deal with national differences in regulating professions. Thus, we will examine to what extent, and under which circumstances, such regulatory strategies may offer viable perspectives for Sino-EU relations; a crucially important question considering the implications of the New Silk Road for higher education on the trade of goods and services between China and Europe.