The Basque Government seeks to alleviate the shortage of health workers through the “temporary” exemption from the nationality requirement to cover, through non-EU citizens, the hiring needs in specialties classified as “deficient or difficult to cover.” The Official Gazette of the Basque Country (BOPV) publishes this Wednesday the agreement by which this measure is decreed, in coherence with what is included in an additional provision of the Public Health Law approved last November.
This route, aimed at alleviating the lack of professionals in some specialties, includes a third movement, in addition to the agreement published today and the new standard approved a little over a month ago. In this case, it is an issue negotiated by the PNV with the PSOE for the investiture agreement of Pedro Sánchez. The Jeltzales included in said pact the transfer, within a period of three months, of the competence for the “homologation and validation of foreign titles.”
Behind this demand, prioritized over the rest of the pending powers of the Statute of Gernika, is in practice this desire to alleviate the shortage of toilets, a problem that has been felt in Basque healthcare. At this point, it is about avoiding bureaucratic problems at the level of validation of degrees and managing this issue directly from Euskadi.
The agreement published this Wednesday in the BOPV states that "it may be exempt, for reasons of general interest, from compliance with the nationality requirement of the specialist medical staff and nursing staff of the Osakidetza-Basque Health Service whose specialties are declared deficient or of difficult coverage due to lack of personnel, for geographical reasons or for reasons related to seasonal periods.”
From there, what was published in the BOPV clarifies that “deficit or difficult-to-cover specialties will be understood as those corresponding to physicians and/or nursing in which there is a structural deficit of personnel for their provision and an objective and urgent need for coverage.” to adequately guarantee healthcare needs.”
Likewise, the text indicates that the “exemption will not be permanent, but temporary, and will be linked to the declaration that is made in this sense” based on certain criteria, while clarifying that the declaration is “temporary” and is will review “at least annually.”
The Basque Health Service has published in the BOPV which are the 55 specialties in which it has detected positions that are difficult to fill and that could be filled by non-European citizens.
