Business calls for EU deal on visas for skilled immigrants

As EU leaders prepare to give the green light to a European Pact on Immigration and Asylum later this week, businesses underline that immigration is not only about controlling borders and illegal workers, but also about attracting highly skilled people to Europe thanks to smoother and faster allocation of work and residence permits.

While conceding that home-grown talent is the most important factor in tackling shortages of highly qualified people in Europe, business representatives taking part in an informal debate ahead of the EU summit on 15-16 October noted that immigration and the increased contribution of high-skilled immigrants to Europe’s competitiveness was “a critical factor”.

One of the main points of the new EU Immigration Pact spearheaded by France, which was already agreed upon late last month by EU ministers in charge of immigration, is to decide on a common EU approach to legal immigration and to increase the attractiveness of Europe for highly skilled people, students and researchers. 

Although not legally binding, the pact builds upon the EU Blue Card initiative and the Commission’s Policy Plan on Legal Migration, currently under debate in the EU institutions. It aims to make it easier for skilled migrants to come to Europe by replacing 27 different visa regimes with a single European one. 

Proposed last October by the Commission, the Council has “nearly” agreed on the Blue Card after first focusing on other immigration issues. While businesses wish to get rid of costly bureaucracy in recruiting and moving their staff around the globe as soon as possible, member states remain divided over a political problem: defining ‘high-skilled worker’ and thus deciding who the scheme is for.

Governments also seem to disagree on how quickly the Blue Card should be handed out following the date of application. The aim is to do it “as soon as possible”. For some, this means thirty days, but for others sixty or even ninety. Businesses, by contrast, say they could wait two weeks at most. They therefore lament that the current Blue Card scheme remains “totally unattractive” from a business point of view and call for “a more ambitious plan”.

But EU countries are also divided between those who are already thinking about the business opportunities that an EU Blue Card could offer and those who wish to protect their labour market, in particular in the current context of high unemployment.

Meanwhile, businesses argue that their future expansion plans are already at risk as a result of shortages of qualified people in Europe. Acute, industry-specific skills gaps, such as in healthcare, ICT or biotech, are said to be due to a mismatch between the skills produced by universities and the competences needed by business. Moreover, 55% of the world’s skilled migrant labour goes to the United States and Canada and only 5% to the EU. 

“An ambitious and coherent EU plan on legal immigration” (with fast-track visas for the highly skilled), and the opportunity for these people to move in with their families and freely circulate inside the EU 27, is needed to ensure companies have enough talented people to stay and grow in Europe, said a business representative.

The Parliament’s civil liberties committee will vote on the Blue Card initiative in early November, after which its report will be voted on in plenary. The Parliament’s role is only consultative.

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