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VISAS

Reader question: What happened to Italy’s planned digital nomad visa?

Italy's digital nomad visa was approved this March. Why haven't we heard any more about it since then, and when can we expect the permit to be finalised? Here's how things look.

What's going on with Italy's digital nomad visa?
Business founders are one of the few people who don't need a job offer under Austria's Red-White-Red card, but there are some catches. Photo by BARBARA GINDL / APA / AFP).

Question: ‘I am extremely interested in the (theoretical) digital nomad visa that was approved earlier this year. I’m wondering what the current status is and what you might know about how the new election will affect the eventual availability of this visa?’

After Italy’s digital nomad visa was enacted into law at the end of March, the implementing decree setting out how exactly it would work should have been released within the following 30 days.

But we’re now midway through October and no such decree has been passed, which means no digital nomad visa – yet. So what happened to it?

The Italian Foreign Ministry, Labour Ministry and Interior Ministry all have to weigh in and sign off on the implementing decree, and the fact that it wasn’t released within the 30-day deadline likely means they weren’t able to find common ground, notes Pietro Derossi, an immigration lawyer at Lexia Avvocati.

And they’re unlikely to do so any time in the near future, thanks to the unexpected collapse of the government over the summer and Italy’s subsequent snap elections in September.

READ ALSO: Remote workers: What are your visa options when moving to Italy?

While those elections did result in a clear winner in the hard-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, the new government is still being formed – a process which will take several more weeks at least.

Once the government is sworn in, it will have several urgent issues to focus on, including presenting next year’s draft budget to the EU for approval (in a normal year, the deadline for this is mid-October), and addressing Italy’s cost of living and energy crises.

All of this means the digital nomad visa is unlikely to be at the top of the new government’s agenda. 

Then there’s the question of what view the next executive will take of the planned permit. The visa was proposed by MPs from the populist Five Star Movement, which is no longer in power, and approved by a broadly centrist coalition government with a very different set of priorities to that of Italy’s incoming leaders.

The Five Star MP backing the visa scheme, Luca Carabetta, was not re-elected to Italy’s new parliament and it’s unclear if others will push the scheme forward on his behalf.

READ ALSO: The five biggest challenges facing Italy’s new hard-right government

On the one hand, incoming prime minister Giorgia Meloni is staunchly anti-immigration (though focuses almost all her anti-migrant rhetoric on ‘illegal immigrants’ and asylum seekers) and is an impassioned promoter of nativist policies, who has accused previous administrations of trying to “replace” the Italian population with foreigners.

While Meloni has not criticised the digital nomad visa specifically, it’s reasonable to suspect she might not be the biggest champion of a scheme promising to make it easier for non-Italians to move to the country.

But at the same time, any government has to reckon with the fact that Italy is suffering from a brain drain and a steady population decline, combined with an increasingly ageing populace that needs supporting by an active workforce. Those behind the digital nomad visa suggest it could be one answer to this problem.

Exactly when we can expect an update on the visa’s progress, and what it might look like when finalised, is still unclear at this stage. Based on the current political situation, it will likely take several more months to be resolved – at the very least.

As Derossi writes: “The number of people who are enchanted by the possibility of pursuing the Italian dream while keeping their job is probably big. A lot is at stake, and we can expect only a very united set of ministers to be capable of finding an agreement on how to give birth to this new revolutionary type of visa.”

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VISAS

How and why is Italy planning to reform its work visa?

After Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced plans to reform the country's work visa scheme, what's the problem with the current system and what is she planning to change?

How and why is Italy planning to reform its work visa?

Meloni on Tuesday announced plans to overhaul the country’s work visa system for non-EU nationals, saying it was being exploited by organised crime groups to smuggle in illegal migrants.

An analysis of the system had uncovered “alarming” data, she said in a cabinet briefing and video speech released by her office on the same day.

READ ALSO: Italy to reform work visa scheme over fears of mafia infiltration

In some regions, the number of applications was “totally disproportionate” to the number of potential employers, and “only a minimal percentage” of those who obtained a work visa actually signed an employment contract, she said.

“We are faced with a mechanism of fraud and circumvention of regular entry systems – with the heavy interference of organised crime – which we must stop and correct,” the prime minister added.

So how does Italy’s work visa system currently work, and why is it so vulnerable to abuse?

Decreto flussi

Every three years, Italy announces a quota of work visas known as the decreto flussi, or ‘flows decree’, with a set number of permits released each year.

These visas are almost entirely allocated to sectors for which there is a high need in Italy; mainly agricultural labour, caregiving, tourism, and heavy industry. Just a few hundred each year are reserved for other forms of work, like self-employment.

For that reason, immigration lawyer Nick Metta of Metta Studio Legale says he tells US-based clients hoping to move to Italy that it’s not worth applying through the decreto flussi – he compares making a successful application to winning the lottery.

It’s important to note that the decreto flussi is completely unrelated to Italy’s new digital nomad visa and the EU Blue Card for highly qualified workers, which aren’t subject to these quotas.

READ ALSO: Q&A: Your questions answered about Italy’s digital nomad visa

Despite coming to power in 2022 on an anti-immigration platform, Meloni’s government significantly raised the decreto flussi quotas: in 2023 the limit was 136,000, compared to around 31,000 in 2018 and 2019.

Giorgia Meloni has said she plans to reform Italy’s work visa scheme to combat criminal exploitation. Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP.

Nevertheless, the quotas remain massively oversubscribed: for the 151,000 places available in 2024, there were 690,000 applications, according to interior ministry data.

The days when applications open online are known as ‘click days’. The slots are typically exhausted within minutes of the submissions window opening, not unlike buying tickets for a music festival. 

Open to abuse

The applications – which can only be made by the prospective employer, not the employee – are then processed chronologically in the order in which they were received, on a first come, first served basis.

In theory, when an application is successful, the prospective employer accompanies the prospective employee to the immigration desk at the local prefettura (prefecture) within eight days of their arrival in Italy to sign a contratto di soggiorno, or employment contract, and complete the process.

In reality, no one’s really checking to make sure the employer actually goes through with this last part once the visa-holder has made it to Italy.

The migrant rights organisation Ero Straniero (‘I was a foreigner’), wrote in a report published last week that just 23.5 percent of all decreto flussi visas approved by Italy last year actually ended in the employer and employee signing a job contract.

This makes the system ripe for abuse: any ’employer’ can offer to put in an application for someone desperate for an Italian visa – for a price.

Meloni in her briefing on Tuesday said she’d heard of traffickers demanding payments of up to €15,000 for a work permit.

EU elections

The prime minister said she “didn’t hesitate” to lodge a complaint with Italy’s national anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor on Tuesday as soon as she learned of the likely involvement of organised crime in the decreto flussi system.

In reality, there are reports dating back over a decade of unscrupulous agents asking for large sums of money in exchange for filing an application, and the timing of Meloni’s speech, days before the EU elections, hasn’t gone unnoticed.

According to Italian newspaper Domani, Ero Straniero and other migrants rights organisations wrote to the interior ministry in March highlighting the problem and asking the government to intervene on behalf of migrant workers.

The organisation recommends that the government offer temporary stay permits for decreto flussi visa-holders waiting for a contract so they’re not left in a state of legal limbo.

Meloni’s focus on Tuesday, however, was firmly on clamping down on the illegal sale of work permits and closing a loophole that has created a “further channel for irregular immigration” – though how she planned to do so was unclear.

Without offering any detail, the prime minister said the government was “already working on a set of regulations to stop this phenomenon” that would be presented in an upcoming cabinet meeting.

Whether the government’s sudden interest in the issue is purely a question of shrewd electioneering, or whether it actually plans to take further action, will be revealed over the next few months.

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