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On 30 November, the German Government agreed its key points on the immigration of skilled workers from third countries. It thus paves the way for the most modern immigration law Germany has ever had. The key points provide for facilitating immigration firstly for skilled workers with recognised foreign vocational qualifications, secondly for skilled workers with proven professional experience, and thirdly by introducing an opportunity card for job-seeking.

According to a new OECD report, Germany is now the OECD’s second most important destination for permanent migration after the United States. As OECD expert Thomas Liebig claims, Germany is the central engine of migration in Europe. The inflow of foreigners to Germany experienced a double-digit growth with almost 465,000 migrants in 2013. This increase is driven primarily by migrants from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe.

Since 1 January 2021, the UK is no longer a part of the EU single market or the EU customs union. The EU’s relationship with the UK including recognition procedures has thus fundamentally changed.

On 1 October 2019 a new funding directive for the recognition of foreign professional qualifications comes into force. It expands the funding opportunities. In future, it will also be possible to get funding for certificate evaluations from the Central Office for Foreign Education (ZAB).

The applicants willing to have their foreign credentials recognised must bear the costs of the recognition procedure. They must meet the costs for an application, translations, certified copies, and if necessary for a qualification analysis, as well as an additional training.

Immigrants perform worse in the labor market than natives, likely because of the low transferability of home-country professional certificates. The standardized recognition of professional certificates in the host country represents one policy for increasing their transferability.This paper investigates the effects of a large recognition reform in Germany on the labor market outcomes of non-EU immigrants.

The “2013 Shortage Analysis” conducted by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) on behalf of the BMWi’s competence centre has found that companies in Germany increasingly have trouble filling vacancies because there are not enough suitable candidates.

The shortage of skilled workers in Germany has been increasing across all sectors for years and is slowing the German economy. A recent study by German Economic Institute (IW) shows that many skilled workers are lacking, especially in occupations with unequal gender ratios.