IMI (Internal Market Information System)

IMI is a web-based application for administrative cooperation between authorities across the EU and EEA. Germany's National IMI Coordinator explains that it was created in 2008 for a single area, professional qualifications, and has since been extended; by 2019 it covered 17 legal areas and 67 cross-border procedures. At the beginning of 2020 about 12,000 authorities were registered across the EU and EEA.

Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012 formally established IMI and sets its rules, including how personal data is handled. Each country appoints an IMI coordinator, and only registered competent authorities can use it. Authorities communicate through pre-defined workflows, called administrative cooperation procedures, which the IMI Regulation describes as a way to communicate and interact in a structured manner.

• Checking qualifications and good standing. Under Article 56 of Directive 2005/36/EC, authorities must use IMI to cooperate and to exchange information about disciplinary action or criminal sanctions affecting a professional.
• European Professional Cards. An application for a European Professional Card creates an IMI file, and the home and host authorities process it there (Articles 4a to 4e).
• Alerts. Under Article 56a, authorities must alert all other member states within three days when a doctor, nurse, midwife, dentist, pharmacist or other professional with patient safety implications is restricted or banned from practice. The Commission adds that alerts also cover people who used falsified diplomas.

No. IMI is a tool for authorities only. You meet it indirectly: when you apply for a European Professional Card, the Commission's online tool creates your IMI file, and when you apply for recognition in another EU country, the host authority may use IMI to contact your previous regulator. You keep data protection rights, including access to and correction of your data, under the IMI Regulation, and personal data may be kept in IMI only for limited periods after a case is closed.

IMI connects authorities in the EU and EEA, not regulators in India, the Philippines or the Gulf. Information from those countries reaches European regulators by other routes, such as a certificate of good standing you request, primary source verification, or document checks by bodies such as Germany's ZAB. Once you are registered in an EU country, however, any later sanction there can be shared with every other member state through IMI.

An alert is limited to your identity, your profession, the authority or court that decided, the scope of the restriction and how long it applies (Article 56a(2)). Article 56a(6) requires that you are told in writing when an alert is sent, that you can appeal or ask for it to be corrected under national law, and that you have remedies for damage caused by a false alert. Alerts must be deleted within three days of the restriction ending or being revoked.