The Iasi Declaration – Safeguarding High Standards in Training and Qualification of Europe’s Future Family Doctors

UEMO reaffirms its commitment to ensuring the highest standards in the education, training, and professional qualification of future family doctors across the European Union.

Family medicine is a cornerstone of strong, safe, and equitable health systems. High-quality primary care depends on physicians who are specifically trained to manage complexity, uncertainty, continuity of care, multimorbidity, prevention, and community-oriented practice. This level of competence cannot be achieved without a structured, supervised, and accredited postgraduate training programme in General Practice/Family Medicine.

We express our growing concern that, in several EU Member States, doctors without specialist training in family medicine continue to be recruited to work independently in primary care. This practice places patients at risk, undermines the quality of care, and weakens the long-term resilience of health systems. It is essential that all EU citizens, regardless of the country in which they live, can rely on primary care delivered by fully trained family doctors.

For this reason, we strongly advocate that postgraduate training in General Practice/Family Medicine must take place within an accredited training programme in an EU Member State, ensuring consistent standards, supervision, and assessment. Mobility of doctors within the EU must never come at the expense of patient safety or professional quality.

We also highlight that almost all EU Member States already recognise General Practice/Family Medicine as a medical specialty. This broad consensus should be fully reflected in EU legislation. We therefore call on the European Commission and the European Parliament to update the Professional Qualifications Directive by including General Practice/Family Medicine in Annex 5.1.4, alongside all other medical specialties. This step is essential to guarantee harmonised standards, strengthen professional mobility, and protect the quality and safety of primary care across Europe.

UEMO urges EU decision makers to act decisively. Europe’s citizens deserve primary care delivered by highly trained specialists. The future of family medicine, and the safety of our populations, depends on it.