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The recognition of foreign professional qualifications is essential for securing skilled workers in Germany. The study conducted by the German Economic Institute on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy on the recognition of foreign professional qualifications from a company perspective shows that companies see potential in the recognition of foreign qualifications, but demand simpler, faster and digitally supported procedures.

The 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO congratulates Germany for its policies in recognizing migrants and refugees’ prior qualifications and skills. The recognition of foreign professional qualifications increases the probability of immigrant employment by 45 percentage points and the hourly wage by 40%. A million migrants a year visit the website ‘Recognition in Germany’, which offers advice on the recognition procedure in 9 languages. The information on foreign vocational training systems and professional qualifications in the BQ-Portal is accessed annually by over 180,000 website visitors, primarily assessment authorities, companies and experts.

The Federal Ministry of Education launched the project “Prototyping Transfer – Professional Recognition through a Qualification Analysis” that is aimed to decrease the organizational cost of the qualification analyses, assure their quality and provide the applicants the financial assistance.

The new Employment Ordinance has been in force since 1 July. The list of occupations in which people with vocational training qualifications from non-EU countries can access the German labour market is now also in place. Following the "EU Blue Card" for the highly skilled, the improved recognition of foreign vocational qualifications and the relaxations in the rules for students from non-EU countries who wish to stay on to work in Germany, this is a further important step towards making it easier for workers from outside the EU to enter the German labour market and towards covering the skills gap in the German economy via migration.

On March 1, 2024, further new changes to the amendment of the Skilled Immigration Act (FEG) come into force.

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 nationwide joint study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), the Research Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin focuses on the arrival, current living conditions and future plans of Ukrainian refugees in Germany. The analyses are based on approximately 11,700 interviews with Ukrainian men and women who arrived in Germany between 24 February and 8 June 2022.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is funding the "Pilot project for the recruitment of foreign skilled workers for the German craft trades" as a supporting measure to accompany the new Skilled Immigration Act, which comes into force on 1 March 2020.

The flyer in Ukrainian describes important stages on the way to recognition of foreign professional qualifications and lists free sources of information and advice.

On 5 June 2025, the German Economic Institute (IW) will present the results of its new study on the recognition of professional qualifications at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Brussels. The event will bring together stakeholders to discuss the role of professional recognition in addressing skills shortages.