Starting from 1 May, holders of the EU Blue Card for highly qualified workers will be able to change employer more easily without submitting a new application. From now on they must receive an annual salary of at least 130 per cent of the average Flemish wage. Until now, this was 120 per cent.
For certain IT profiles, diplomas are no longer taken into account, only relevant experience.
From now on, inspection services can also refuse an application on legal grounds, for example in cases when companies appear to have no staff or with too little turnover to justify additional staff.
At the same time, the Flemish government wants to strengthen the incentive for employers to look for candidates on the Flemish or European labour markets first. The occupation shortage list for middle-skilled profiles will be reviewed more regularly. The list includes types of jobs for which employers don’t need to see if they can recruit workers from the domestic labour market first.
For low skilled jobs on the employment agency’s broader occupation shortage list, recruitment can take place outside the EU, but the employer must in future first prove that they have spent at least 9 weeks looking for a suitable candidate within the EU. Until now, that was only six weeks.
The Flemish government hopes the new rules will help to attract top foreign talent more easily and deal with structural shortages on the labour market. At the same time, the new rules aim to tighten economic migration policy and reduce abusive and what is termed 'improper economic migration'.