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Denmark hikes fees for residence and work permit applications

Application fees for several types of work and residence permits in Denmark went up on Thursday following the enactment of the 2023 budget.

Published: 17 May 2023 17:44 CEST

Denmark hikes fees for residence and work permit applications

Application fees for work and study permits along with permanent residence and family reunification cases went up in Denmark on May 17th. Photo by Thomas Lefebvre on Unsplash

Fees for applying for work and study permits, along with family reunification and permanent residence have changed after the 2023 budget was passed, the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) said in statements on its website.

The fee for family reunification applications is reduced from 10,330 kroner to 9,750 kroner, while all other fees go up.

The new fees apply to all applications submitted from May 17th onwards. People who are not EU nationals must pay the fees when applying for residence permits in Denmark.

People who paid an application fee before May 17th but have not yet submitted the final application will need to pay the difference between the old and new fees, SIRI states. This could extend processing times and even lead to applications being rejected if the difference is not paid by the given deadline, the agency said.

The increase in application fees in itself is not unusual, since they are updated each year. However, the changes usually take effect on January 1st.

Because 2023’s budget was delayed and not adopted in parliament until May 16th, the fee regulation has taken effect several months later than usual this year.

The normal schedule for the budget was disrupted by the general election which took place on November 1st 2022.

READ ALSO: Danish parliament votes through 2023 budget three months before new proposal due

The changes to application fees can be seen below:

Graphic: SIRI screengrab

Graphic: SIRI screengrab

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EXPLAINED: How does Denmark decide work permit 'standard' salaries?

When assessing applications for work permits under programmes including the Pay Limit Scheme, the Fast Track Scheme and the Positive List, the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI), which is responsible for processing work permits, uses income statistics to decide whether a job that has been offered is within the Danish standards for salary.

The statistics are provided by the Confederation of Danish Employers (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening, DA) and are updated regularly – most recently on June 17th.

SIRI uses these statistics to “assess whether an offered salary is customary according to Danish standards,” the agency states.

READ ALSO: Denmark scraps compulsory bank account work permit rule

Danish work permit rules require salary and other employment conditions offered to the foreign employee to be equivalent to those on the Danish labour market. This applies for first-time applications as well as for extensions.

For example, the Pay Limit scheme allows work permits to be granted to applicants who have been offered a salary by a Danish employer which is at or above the government-set minimum amount.

The salary standards are usually updated every quarter as new statistics become available. The update announced on June 17th is effective for applications submitted after July 1st, and a further update will be due on October 1st.

As such, if you have submitted or submit your application by the end of June, the previous salary statistics will be used to check whether the salary has been offered fits with Danish standards.

READ ALSO: Restaurant manager refused Danish work permit as salary deemed too high to be believable

The specific work permit schemes to which salary standards are assessed is as follows:

Pay Limit Scheme
Supplementary Pay Limit Scheme
Fast track Scheme (pay limit track, supplementary pay limit track, short term track, researcher track)
Researcher’s Scheme
Positive List for People with a Higher Education
Positive List for Skilled Work
Special Individual Qualifications Scheme
Herdsmen and Farm Managers Scheme
Internship Scheme
Employment for Adaption and Training Purposes Scheme

Additionally, people who apply for a separate work permit as an accompanying family members to someone with Danish residency rights will also have the salary of the job offer assessed as part of their application.

When does SIRI examine whether the job offer salary corresponds to Danish standards?

If your employment and employer are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and the salary is at least 71,020 kroner per month (2024 level), SIRI will not usually look more closely at the exact salary or compare it with statistics.

Collective bargaining agreements – overenskomster in Danish – are the agreements negotiated between trade unions and employers’ organisations every few years, regulating (many aspects of Denmark’s labour market, from wages to paid parental leave.

However, if these circumstances are not set out in the job offer, SIRI will then assess whether the salary conforms to Danish standards.

If the agency finds that the salary does not correspond to Danish standards, it can ask for a comment from your employer and for a second opinion from the Regional Labour Market Councils (RARs), it says in an outline of how it applies the rules.

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