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Five expert tips for getting your Italian elective residency visa approved

Here are the main things you should know if you want to succeed first time round when applying for Italy's popular - but elusive - elective residency visa.

Published: 6 February 2023 12:48 CET
Updated: 5 March 2024 13:20 CET

Here's what you should know if you want to move to Italy on an ERV. Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP.

The elective residency visa (ERV) is a popular route to permanently relocating to Italy, but the application process can be hard to navigate and the rejection rate high.

To help readers who are considering taking the plunge maximise their chance of success first time round, The Local spoke to three experts about how to put together the best application possible.

Based on what they told us, we put together a detailed guide to the process, as well as specific advice for UK applicants.

Here are five key takeaways on how to make a successful elective residency visa application.

Write a convincing cover letter

Most consulates require a letter of motivation along with your application explaining why you want to move to Italy.

Applicants often put minimal effort into this, simply saying they love the Italian food and weather, says Elze Obrikyte from Giambrone & Partners – and that’s a mistake.

She says ‘pre-rejection’ decisions are often issued on the basis of this letter alone, even if all the other requirements are met.

EXPLAINED: How to apply for an elective residency visa to move to Italy

That’s because consular officials want to see you have a strong interest in moving to Italy permanently, not just coming for short stints on holiday.

Because of this, you want to make sure you underscore your ties to Italy, your familiarity with the town you plan to move to, and any other supporting information.

While language skills aren’t a requirement, “if you mention that you are studying Italian or you know Italian, which helps you to integrate better, this is also an advantage for your application,” says Obrikyte.

You should provide as much evidence as you can for a successful ERV application. Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP. — Showing you have a strong connection to Italy will help your application. Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP.

Get your finances in order

Because you’re not allowed to work or receive an ‘active’ income when you come to Italy on an ERV, you need to be able to demonstrate that you have a ‘passive income’ of at least €31,000 per year (€38,000 joint income for married couples).

Nick Metta of Studio Legale Metta says applicants sometimes think that having a large amount of money invested in bonds or the stock market is sufficient, but this won’t satisfy the officials reviewing your application.

Whether it’s in the form of a pension, annuity, rent, or some other mechanism, you need to prove that you receive a regular income stream in perpetuity and won’t become a burden on the Italian state.

If you don’t currently have passive income of at least €31,000 you may want to speak to a consultant about restructuring your finances, as you won’t be granted an ERV unless the consulate can check this box.

More is more

Consulates can differ in their exact requirements for the ERV, with some saying you don’t necessarily have to provide a letter of motivation or travel tickets to Italy.

But our experts were all agreed: it’s always best to include as much documentation as possible with your application to be on the safe side.

Even though not all consulates require travel tickets, “it’s always better just to enclose them,” says Obrikyte; “I always advise our clients to close as many documents as possible, just to reduce the risk of rejection”.

“The cover letter for some consulates is not a requirement, for some consulates it is a requirement,” says Metta. “We always recommend that you prepare and file a cover letter with every single elective residency visa application.”

The experts also recommend providing a separate cover page with a contents summary for all the documentation submitted, to make things easy for the consular official reviewing your application.

You should provide as much evidence as you can for a successful ERV application. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

Be polite and deferential

The Italian consulate in charge of reviewing your ERV application has total power over whether or not it’s accepted – including the ability to raise the income threshold above the official minimum.

That means you want to be as deferential as possible all your interactions with staff, and avoid coming across as entitled or demanding.

“You don’t want to go there and say ‘oh, here is the printing of the law’ and this and that – absolutely not,” says Metta.

You’ll also want to make sure you book your travel tickets for at least 90 days after your appointment date – the full period allotted for the consulate to review the application – so it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to rush their decision.

There’s room to negotiate

Finally, our experts stressed that if your application is rejected, that decision isn’t necessarily final.

Obrikyte says it’s typical for consulates to issue a ‘pre-rejection’ notice before delivering their final answer that specifies what the sticking point is, giving you a chance to fix the issue.

“In that occasion it is possible to try to negotiate and change their mind, and this happens very very often,” she says.

When a client of his was told he needed income of at least €100,000, “we contacted the person in charge, exchanged correspondence, provided some extra legal support in terms of evidence and official sources, and we got another appointment and the person finally got their visa,” Metta says.

While you can appeal a rejection in court, Metta says he advises his clients just to reapply, as it’s “so much faster, easier.”

Please note that The Local cannot advise on individual cases. For further information on the ERV and how to apply, visit the Italian foreign ministry’s visa website.

Member comments

Anonymous - 24 April 2023 at 18:29 CEST

Hi
I really enjoy your newspaper, my focus is Italy but information about the other European countries gives a great balance..My question is , how long does the ERV last, and if you have to reapply is there a more streamlined process?
Many thanks.
Anonymous - 1 October 2023 at 09:07 CEST

I don’t know if it helps, but I included a letter of recommendation of my character from a friend whose family is from Italy (one generation back). She wrote the letter in Italian. It’s not listed in article, but it might be of some assistance and bolster your letter of intent. I tried to approach my application like a job application in that regard. Buona fortuna!
Anonymous - 13 October 2023 at 18:46 CEST

The San Francisco Consulate in the USA wanted to see where we were going to live for the year of the visa. We had the deed for our Italian home to show them.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

How easy is it to get Italy's new digital nomad visa?

The introduction of Italy’s long-awaited digital nomad visa, a full two years after parliament first approved the idea in principle, has generated significant buzz in international remote working circles.

Many questions remain, however, about how to access the visa.

We put some of those to Italian immigration law expert Nick Metta from Studio Legale Metta.

He told us that while in many respects the decree is surprisingly lenient, it also contains some clear hurdles, particularly for self-employed workers.

Besides those obstacles laid out in the text of the law itself, Italian consulates have the power to introduce their own rules, making the visa more difficult to obtain in practice.

We discussed the ways in which the law is more lenient than anticipated, as well as potential obstacles prospective applicants can expect to encounter.

Let’s start by looking at some of the ways in which the application criteria are relatively generous:

The skills threshold is low

The decree requires applicants to be “highly skilled”, which is defined as having a three-year degree with six months’ relevant experience, an accredited professional qualification, or equivalent experience – all of which, Metta says, is surprisingly lenient.

“We would have expected a high level of scrutiny over the “high skills”, but high skills can be really pretty much anything.

“They say if you have a college degree and six months work experience, that’s enough. Does that qualify you as having high skills? I don’t think so.”

As for equivalent professional experience, Metta notes that getting a professional qualification or licence is often easier abroad than in Italy.

Italy’s digital nomad visa allows you to work from anywhere in the country. Photo by David L. Espina Rincon on Unsplash

“Look at lawyers: lawyers could get a licence in Spain without any exam until a few years ago. So a lot of students used to go to Spain, take up their licence and go back to Italy to practice.

“There are still some situations like that, where licences in certain areas are granted with much less scrutiny than would be the case in Italy.”

Access to the Italian job market

In the past, Metta says, Italy’s laws have been staunchly protectionist when it comes accessing the Italian labour market.

“In the previous immigration law, if you wanted to hire someone from overseas you had to demonstrate that there was a lack of available candidates in the same industry for the same role in Italy,” he says – but in the new law, “there is zero about that”.

The decree also doesn’t say that remote workers most be employed by clients or companies based overseas, in theory opening up the domestic job market to non-EU nationals.

“It’s not direct in saying you can be employed by an Italian employer, but there are so many references that make it an obvious conclusion that one could be hired by an employer from Italy.”

Leniency around income and background checks

Metta observes that the law doesn’t specify that your income – which must be at least three times the minimum amount that would grant you free access to Italy’s national health service, or just under €28,000 – must come from work.

That means other income sources, such as rent, could count towards this amount.

The decree also doesn’t require you to undergo a criminal background check or personally sign an affidavit affirming that you don’t have a criminal record.

It’s only employers or clients based in Italy, Metta clarifies, who must self-certify that they’ve not been convicted within the last five years of specific crimes relating to migration, sex work, exploitation of minors or labour exploitation.

What’s involved in applying for Italy’s digital nomad visa? Photo by David L. Espina Rincon on Unsplash

He notes, however, that individual consulates may require the applicant to supply a criminal background check.

“The fact that the law doesn’t ask for a background check in your own country doesn’t mean the Italian consulate won’t ask for it, because for the elective residency visa and other visas the Italian consulates have thrown it in.”

Potential hurdles

While many of the requirements for the digital nomad visa are more relaxed than experts predicted, Metta notes that there are a number of potential hurdles.

Many of these relate to being self-employed – which a majority of remote workers are – as freelancers typically lack a steady income or proof of employment.

Here are some of the obstacles that would-be applicants for the digital nomad visa are likely to face:

Employment contracts and references

The decree requires that applications provide either an employment contract or a ‘letter of collaboration’.

Most freelancers don’t have the former, which means they’ll need to ask their clients to supply the latter.

“Hopefully they have simple engagement letters or letters of collaboration, a track record that they can demonstrate,” says Metta.

He notes that with Italy’s elective residency visa (ERV), consulates often request letters of reference from an accountant certifying your spending and annual income – so something similar might apply here.

“It is very possible that they might ask for a letter recommendation from a client you might have had for a while or evidence of signed engagement letters from other clients; something that would give the consulate similar peace of mind to a contract with an employer.”

Accommodation requirement

The law requires an applicant to prove they already have accommodation in Italy.

While it doesn’t say what kind of proof is required, in the case of the ERV, consulates have made it clear in the past that booking an airbnb doesn’t count: you must have either a rental lease agreement or a property ownership deed.

Metta says he gets usually approaches this rule by advising applicants who don’t own Italian property to sign a 12-month lease agreement, adding a clause that allows them to leave with two or three months’ notice.

Proof of income

For self-employed workers whose annual salary tends to fluctuate year on year, proving you meet the government’s minimum income threshold might be a challenge.

The consulate is likely to request tax returns and bank statements, “and once again, they might ask for a letter of reference from your financial advisor or accountant confirming what you’re saying,” says Metta.

“It’s almost like when you go to apply for a mortgage: if you’re self-employed it’s a little bit tougher.”

When it comes to the ERV, consulates have in the past sometimes raised the income threshold significantly above the government’s limit, and Metta suggests the same could happen here.

Can you make a living while travelling the world? Italy’s new digital nomad visa is expected to make this easier. Photo by Persnickety Prints on Unsplash

He compares two applicants: one “a person who has been working for Microsoft for ten years, wanting to go to Italy with a letter from HR saying it’s totally cool with us if this person moves to Italy”; another “self-employed with six months of experience just fresh out of college with a very very limited track record.”

In the latter case, he says, “the Italian consulate wants to be impressed. €28,000? Ehh…”

“What we recommend is, try to make your application as solid as possible,” he says.

“So if you are fresh out of college with only six months of experience, make sure you have, once again, a letter of recommendation, leads, people who are promising to engage you. Whatever you can, try to throw it in.”

The consulate has absolute power

As mentioned above, an Italian consulate has the power to arbitrarily raise the government’s minimum income threshold and tighten the application criteria – and if yours is strict, there’s not much you can do about it.

“The Italian consulates have discretion based on geography, socio-economic situation, and so many other factors,” says Metta.

While it’s still very early days for the digital nomad visa, some applicants have already reported being turned away by their local consulate.

A member of Facebook group Expats Living in Italy said they were recently informed by the Miami consulate that applicants “must have a masters degree or certification and have contacts with “a company like Apple” to be eligible.

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