IFLA Europe webinar: “Recognition of landscape architecture profession in Europe”
The first webinar on the Recognition of landscape architecture profession in Europe explored the different aspects and current developments towards our profession recognition, attended by 49 Delegates and representatives of National Associations.
Katerina Gkoltsiou, President of IFLA Europe, described the current context of the profession based on the results of the Membership survey, the countries where the profession is regulated or not, and pointed out the challenge of the poor recognition of the profession in terms of identification and scope of duties, struggling with encroaching on its competences by other professions. A clear, European wide definition of competences would help, together with a good educational system. The roadmap should focus on a Common Training Framework which is under elaboration, combined with complains at national level to the European Commission or National Bodies.
The second speaker Fritz Auweck, IFLA Europe Professional Qualifications Directive (PQD) Advisor, presented the current status of the Professional Qualification Directive and the context of recognition, describing the regulation and recognition process of the profession. He explained also the process from the PQD towards the CTF steps, including the recognition on the basis of common training principles, mainly counting that more countries will achieve a regulated profession and the CTF will be approved by the European Commission.
Jana Pyšková, CAKA President (Czech Association of Landscape Architecture) and Nikola Watté, FFP Delegate (French Landscape Federation France, presented their „success stories“ from Czech Republic and France, where the National Associations were successful in their profession regulation. The last speakers Jeroen De Vries,
LE:Notre/InnoLAND and Gintaras Stauskis, InnoLAND project coordinator, LALA Delegate and Professor at Vilnius TECH, described the INNOLAND project, the challenges of the profession, and the CTF as a set of common requirements for education, professional practice and continuous professional development of the profession. Especially the level of education and requirements for being registered as landscape architect (Master degree, additional professional traineeship, continuous professional development) were mentioned as requirements for achieving its recognition. It is expected that the CTF proposal will be finalized by 2023 and hopefully adopted by the EU Commission by “delegated act” followed by an implementing act to list the national professional qualifications and national titles that benefit from automatic recognition.
The presentations were followed by a lively discussion and questions to the „success stories“ candidates, especially how our Czech colleagues were able to mobilise and get recognition, but also how our French colleagues were successful in identifying the appropriate partners and officials at ministry levels.
We would like to thank all participants again for attending our first webinar; we do hope that this webinar delivered interesting information and could help you to understand the context and the current process of the European recognition of our profession. We have collected for your information the presentations of our speakers and they are now available on the website under News.
The next Webinar on the Recognition of landscape architecture profession in Europe is planned to take place by Mid June 2022 and will focus on a current update of INNOLAND and the CTF, success stories (eg The Netherlands) and a candidate country (Romania), including an open discussion. We are all looking forward to meet you again!
Recording available on IFLA Europe Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/L76WyFt3RFQ
