A new Grand-Ducal regulation--that of 15 March 2024, coming into force on 24 March--has increased the minimum salary required to acquire an EU Blue Card, a residence permit for “highly qualified workers” () from outside the EU. To qualify, individuals must have a job offer (one-year contract minimum) that pays 1.5 times the country’s average gross salary, or 1.2 times in the case of certain professions.
These latter professions include statisticians, systems analysts, software developers, web developers, applications programmers, database designers, systems administrators, computer network professionals and others.
In Luxembourg, the average gross salary was €58,968 in 2022, which brings the qualifying thresholds to €88,452 and €70,762, respectively.
The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic is obvious in the numbers, but the recovery afterwards was swift.
In 2023, Blue Card permits were mainly granted to information and communications technology specialists and business administration specialists. Indians, Russians and Turks were among the three nationalities who received the most such permits in 2023, accounting jointly for almost 50% of first-time applicants. When contacted, the ministry of home affairs stated that the average time taken to process a Blue Card application was 38 days in 2023.
The vast majority of Blue Card applications are approved: the rare refusals are often due to incomplete applications or salaries below the required threshold. There are no exact statistics for these refusals, however, because some applicants are referred to other categories of residence permit (e.g. salaried worker) where they are accepted.
According to the ministry’s activity report, in 2023 the directorate general for immigration issued a total of 20,528 residence permits, including 9,407 initial residence permits, 1,020 long-term residence permits and 10,101 renewed residence permits.
The Chamber of Commerce deplores these new provisions and is calling for the salary threshold for highly qualified workers to be lowered from 1.5 to 1.0 times the average gross annual salary. It points out that Luxembourg has the highest average hourly labour costs in the EU.
The aim of the EU Blue Card programme is to make it easier to attract certain profiles to EU countries that want them by offering a simplified procedure and advantageous conditions for holders and their families. Eligibility criteria generally include a high level of education, such as a university degree, and a job offer of one year or more with a specified minimum wage. The card offers certain additional rights compared with other residence permits, such as increased mobility within the EU after a specified period and a four-year validity period.
This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.