Background:

Article 13 of Directive (EU) 2021/1883 on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purpose of highly qualified employment states that Member States may provide for recognition procedures for employers in accordance with their national law or administrative practice for the purposes of a simplified procedure for obtaining an EU Blue Card.

As the Slovak Republic is discussing the possibility of transposing Article 13, it wished to learn about other Member States´ experiences with the transposition of the Article or any other experiences regarding a system of recognised employers in existing national practice/legislation.

Respondents:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden answered the Ad-Hoc Questions.

Findings:

Most responding States (BE, BG, CY, CZ, EE, EL, FR, HR, LU, LV, PL, SE, SI and SK) indicated that they had no such system in place. LT indicated that it did not have such system in place anymore, but in the past did. On 1 January 2024, EL legislation will enter into force that implements Article 13 of the Directive.

In HU, the "preferred employer system" exists independently from the Blue Card implementation. The system allows third-country potential employees to follow a simplified procedure for his/her residence permit application if the employer is preferred and if certain conditions are met. One of these conditions is that the third-country national must fill a shortage occupation position on the Hungarian labour market; such positions may include highly skilled occupations.

In IE, the "trusted partner system" exists. While the scheme does not provide priority access to certain types of permits for Trusted Partner employers, the objective of the initiative is to ease the administrative burden on employers/connected persons/EEA contractors in expansion mode and to remove the requirement that they replicate the same employer/connected person information in respect of each employment permit application made for grant or renewal.

In IT, for the purposes of access to a simplified procedure for the authorisation of workers with the Blue Card scheme, employers must have signed a special memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of the Interior, after having consulted the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy.

Under ES legislation, a special scheme exists that provides for a fast-track procedure for work permits of entrepreneurs, investors, highly qualified workers, researchers, digital nomads or intra company transfers. The procedure takes approximately 20 days and is fully electronic.

Other systems exist in FI and NL.

For further details, please read the compilation of answers attached above.