The new EU veterinary training requirements and what they mean for your next ESEVT visitation
The deadline inside your accreditation cycle
By 10 April 2027, every EU Member State must transpose Commission Delegated Directive (EU) 2025/1223 into national law. It rewrites the EU minimum training requirements for veterinary surgeons, and for most schools it lands in the middle of their ESEVT accreditation cycle.
That timing matters. ESEVT accreditation is valid for seven years from the date of the Full Visitation, and Standard 3.1 of the ESEVT SOP 2023 requires that graduates achieve the attributes expected to be "fully compliant with the EU Directive 2005/36/EC (as amended by directive 2013/55/EU) and its Annex V.4.1".
The SOP has not yet been updated to reference Directive 2025/1223. EAEVE has said the SOP will stay unchanged until its next scheduled review in 2027, and schools should expect the ESEVT benchmark to follow the law once the new requirements are in force. For many establishments, the next visitation is likely to be the first since the amended requirements took effect. The work to meet them, and to show that you meet them, starts well before the visitors arrive.
UK schools are not bound by EU transposition, but those in the ESEVT system are affected through Standard 3.1.
What Directive 2025/1223 changes
The Directive amends Directive 2005/36/EC in two places: Article 38(3), which sets out what veterinary training must guarantee, and Annex V point 5.4.1, the minimum list of subjects.
Article 38(3) is replaced. Training "shall provide an assurance" that the professional has acquired the knowledge and skills set out across nine points, (a) to (i). In summary:
Point | Knowledge, skills and competences training must assure |
(a) | The sciences on which veterinary activities are based, and the EU law relating to them |
(b) | The structure, functions, behaviour and physiological needs of animals, and the skills for their husbandry, feeding, welfare, reproduction and hygiene |
(c) | Clinical, epidemiological and analytical skills and competences for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of animals, including assessing and managing pain and safely performing aseptic surgery, sedation, anaesthesia and euthanasia, and specific knowledge of diseases transmissible to humans |
(d) | Preventive medicine, including competences relating to biosecurity, inquiries, and certification |
(e) | The hygiene and technology of animal feed and of food of animal origin, including the skills to understand and explain good practice |
(f) | The knowledge, skills and competences required for the responsible and sensible use of veterinary medicinal products, in order to treat animals and to ensure the safety of the food chain and the protection of the environment |
(g) | The One Health concept, including the skills and competences for its application and integration in veterinary public health |
(h) | The organisation and management of a veterinary business, including practice management and animal health economics, and interpersonal and interprofessional communication, teamworking and multi-disciplinary collaboration |
(i) | Adequate knowledge of data management, information technology and digital technologies, and the skills and competences for their practical application in the veterinary domain |
Summarised from Article 38(3) as replaced by Directive (EU) 2025/1223. Points (f) and the opening of (i) follow the official wording.
Annex V point 5.4.1 is also replaced. Changes include "Pharmacy, pharmacology and pharmacotherapy (including antimicrobial resistance)" in place of the separate subjects "Pharmacology" and "Pharmacy", and the subject "Veterinary legislation and forensic veterinary medicine".
The rules on practical training are unchanged. A full-time training period under the direct control of the competent authority is still permitted, up to six months within the five years of study.
Competences change the evidence question
A list of subjects can be answered with a timetable. A list of competences cannot. When the law says training must "provide an assurance" that each graduate can do something, the natural question for a visitor is: how do you know?
ESEVT already frames the curriculum this way. Standard 3.1 requires that the programme "must allow the acquisition of the Day One Competences" listed in Annex 2 of the SOP. The amended Article 38(3) adds weight to areas that are easier to teach than to evidence, such as One Health, biosecurity, antimicrobial resistance and digital competence.
For each of these, visitors can reasonably ask three things:
1. Where in the curriculum is it taught?
2. Where, and by whom, is it assessed?
3. What record shows that each student has achieved it?
The third question is where most of the effort sits. Evidence that lives in paper logbooks, rotation spreadsheets and individual clinicians' inboxes is hard to bring together for a self-evaluation report, and harder still to show on the day.
Two cohorts, two sets of requirements
The new requirements do not take away recognition from students already in training. As the Commission's explanatory memorandum notes, veterinary surgeons whose training began before the end of the transposition period (10 April 2027), and which met the requirements in force when it began, keep automatic recognition under Article 21(1) of Directive 2005/36/EC.
In practice, many schools will have cohorts under different requirements at the same time for several years: students who began before the end of the transposition period, trained against the old Article 38(3) and Annex V, and those who begin after it, trained against the new ones. Some schools may choose to apply the new requirements to every student, since they largely build on the old ones.
Either way, programme leads face a mapping task as well as a teaching one. The self-evaluation report needs to make clear which framework applies to which students, and how each cohort is shown to meet it.
Before your next visitation
The schools in the strongest position in 2027 and beyond will be those that treat the Directive as an evidence project, not just a curriculum review. Five steps to start with:
Map the nine areas of Article 38(3) to your Day One Competences. Note where the new emphasis on One Health, biosecurity, antimicrobial resistance and digital competence is already covered, and where it is not.
Find where each competence is assessed. Look for assessment in clinical rotations, intramural teaching and extramural practical training, not only in written examinations.
Check your national timeline. Transposition dates and any transitional rules will vary between Member States. Confirm the date that applies to your incoming cohorts.
Decide how you will handle your cohorts. Choose whether to track students under the old and new requirements side by side or apply the new requirements to all, and how that will appear in your self-evaluation report.
Test your evidence trail. Pick one competence and one student, and see how long it takes to show who assessed it, when, and against what standard.
That last step is often the hardest, and it is where a competency-based ePortfolio such as MyProgress gives faculty a single, auditable record across placements, assessors and cohorts.
Join the webinar: The ESEVT 7-year clock
The Directive sets what graduates must be able to do. ESEVT visitors ask how you know they can. In a live webinar on Microsoft Teams, MyKnowledgeMap looks at what visitors look for across the seven-year accreditation cycle, and how veterinary establishments can build that evidence year by year rather than in the final months before a visitation.
The ESEVT 7-year clock: what visitors look for | Wednesday 2 December 2026, 13:00 UK | 14:00 CET, Microsoft Teams
