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Italy approves ‘digital nomad’ visa for remote workers

For 'highly qualified' remote workers planning to base themselves in Italy, a new visa option is soon expected to offer an easier route.

Published: 31 March 2022 10:23 CEST

Italy approves ‘digital nomad’ visa for remote workers

With remote working more common than ever due to the pandemic, Italy is making special visa provisions. Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP

After weeks of speculation and doubt, the Italian ‘digital nomad visa’ was approved and signed into law this week according to lawmakers.

Italy now looks set to join EU countries including Germany and Portugal in offering a special visa allowing remote workers to move to Italy from outside the European Union.

A provision for a new digital nomad visa was included in Italy’s ‘decreto sostegni ter‘, a government decree which was approved in January and converted into law on March 28th.

It’s hoped that the new digital nomad visa will mean a far easier route to a new life in Italy than the current visa options available, which immigration experts say are not always viable for freelancers and remote workers.

While it is possible for many non-EU nationals to spend up to 90 days in Italy without a visa, anyone wishing to work legally while here must apply for a visa and work permit.

However, with the details of the new visa still to be confirmed, it’s not yet clear how much easier the new route will be.

“We are happy to have approved the proposal but we are also aware of the next steps. The government has to work on a new bill to implement the law, defining all the procedures and details,” Five Star Movement MP Luca Carabetta, who promoted the digital nomad visa, told The Local.

“We worked all along with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this and we are sure they will lead this process,” he added.

READ ALSO: How to get an Italian work visa

This means it could still be some time until the Italian government publishes full details of the visa application process and requirements.

The text of the bill stated that the visa will be for those “who carry out highly qualified work activities through the use of technological tools that allow them to work remotely, autonomously or for a company that is not resident in the territory of the Italian state.

As for who counts as a “highly qualified” worker, financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore writes that this category includes everyone “from university professors to circus employees, seafarers and professional nurses”.

Il Sole said that these professionals will not be subject to the restrictions on the number of work permits issued annually under Italy’s decreto flussi (the foreign workers’ quota), but that “their entry is in any case subject to the issue of a work permit which must be requested by their employer”.

Carabetta said the approval provides for “the establishment of a dedicated visa and permit lasting one year, which can be extended for a further year and can be extended to the family unit of the remote worker”.

Application looks set to entail a minimum income requirement, though the amount is not yet known.

According to Carabetta, “Requirements for the remote worker are the availability of suitable accommodation, adequate income, health insurance, and a clean criminal record.”

Existing visa options available to non-EU remote workers moving to Italy include the self-employment visa, intra-company visa, and the EU Blue Card. Find out more about those here.

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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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