Current news

This section will keep you up to date with the latest information about the BQ-Portal, current events and important news related to the recognition of professional qualifications.
For 10 years, the official website "Make it in Germany" has accompanied many stories in the field of skilled immigration. On the anniversary page, qualified professionals share their personal experiences, voices from the partner network reflect on political developments and employers provide insights into successful recruitment abroad. Moreover, the timeline shows how the project has developed in the last 10 years.
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.
Refugees are increasingly succeeding in integrating into the German labour market. Particularly female refugees benefit from improved recognition and training opportunities for their qualifications in the teaching and health care sectors.
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 flyer in Ukrainian describes important stages on the way to recognition of foreign professional qualifications and lists free sources of information and advice.
A successful decade of recognition of foreign professional qualifications lies behind us! More than 400,000 applications for recognition and an annual increase in applications until 2019 prove that the Recognition Act has been successful. Procedures as well support structures are well established.
The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has evaluated the recognition of foreign professional qualifications in 2020. Overall, 5% more foreign vocational qualifications were recognised as fully or partially equivalent in 2020 than in the previous year.
Make it in Germany has published six new videos on the topic of "how the fast-track procedure for skilled workers succeeds". Fast-track procedure is aimed at speeding up the administrative procedures for professionals wishing to work in Germany until the visa is issued. Three German companies report the path to employment with the Skilled Workers Immigration Act and about the fast-track procedure, from the perspective of skilled workers and companies .
The new guideline of the funding programme Integration through Qualification (IQ) for guidance counsellors provides information on the application possibilities of Section 16d of the Residence Act. Various topics are covered in connection with the recognition procedure, such as qualifications to compensate significant differences to the German reference occupation, visa procedures, funding and necessary documents. In addition, IQ has published a "Handout for Professionals" in German and English.
1 March 2021 is the first anniversary of Germany´s Skilled Workers Immigration Act. The initial assessment is positive: Despite the pandemic, 30,000 visas for skilled workers and trainees were granted.