To offer PR services do you need a licence?

Toni Musi Falconi, as always with his finger on the button. He has entered the debate about whether PR practitioners should be licenced.

He makes this comment: Pressed by increasing social and media criticism of our profession and a recent comment by Richard Edelman on the potential merit of licensing, PRSA the other day asked its ethics committee to discuss the issue and make recommendations to the Board.
Criticisms emerged when the Committee decided to keep contents of the meeting confidential and subsequently a brief summary of that discussion was published on the PRSA website.
Interestingly, the debate on licensing of the profession is open also in many other countries. Some have already proceeded (Nigeria, Brazil, Panama, Peru amongst others), others are in the process (Russia for one, but also Puerto Rico…and one may also argue that the 2005 decision of the UK’s CIPR to be the first European Union country to be formally recognized by the national Government could well lead to this result, and this would inevitably influence the ongoing discussion in other EU countries).