Internal Market Information System (IMI), National IMI Coordinator (NIMIC)

In every Member State, the position of a national IMI coordinator (NIMIC) has been created. In Germany, this position is located at the Federal Office of Administration (BVA). The NIMIC has a coordinating and advising role with regard to all IMI-related activities in Germany. Because of Germany’s federal state structure, the organization of IMI is complex. There is one regional administrative coordinator in each federal state, called Länder-Coordinator, and further coordinators responsible for a specific legal area. The NIMIC works in close cooperation with these coordinators and all other national actors involved to ensure the smooth functioning of IMI in Germany, supporting them on questions regarding concrete IMI information requests or technical issues and providing information on new developments concerning IMI. The NIMIC is also the point of contact in Germany for the European Commission and the other Member States with respect to IMI.

 IMI has improved the functioning of the European administrative cooperation, which is vital for the smooth functioning of the EU’s single market. The main beneficiaries of a smooth and well-functioning inter-administrative cooperation are businesses and citizens. The use of IMI has several direct positive implications for citizens’ daily lives. For example, citizens profit from easier and faster information exchange concerning the recognition of professional qualifications and the verification of school and university certificates. In 2016, the European professional card (EPC) was introduced. This EU-wide, fully online procedure has further simplified and standardized the recognition of professional qualifications for five professions (general care nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, real estate agents and mountain guides). The EPC can be extended to other professions in the future. Citizens also benefit from the easier process in relation to the recognition of certain public documents, such as birth or marriage certificates, issued in other EU Member States. These documents are now in general treated the same as national documents without the necessity to add an apostille, a translation or a notarized copy. It is possible to obtain multilingual standard forms in place of a translation. In case of legitimate doubts as regards the authenticity of the documents, an IMI information request to the issuing authority can be initiated.

 IMI was created in 2008 for one single legal area, namely professional qualifications, and has been continuously extended to further legal areas in the following years. In 2019, IMI was already used in 17 legal areas and 67 cross-border procedures. At the same time, the use of IMI by the competent authorities is increasing steadily. While there were only about 30 information requests per month in 2008, this number increased to about 1,600 in 2019. With every legal area newly integrated into IMI, additional authorities have to be registered. At the beginning of 2020, there were 5,300 authorities registered in Germany and about 12,000 in the whole EU (EEA). Further information and statistics on IMI are available at the IMI website or in the Single Market Scoreboard.

Information exchanges in IMI