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In the beginning of July, the Federal Government passed an act revising the residence rights and thereby created new options for immigration of skilled workers wishing to have their foreign credentials recognized in Germany. A new act is aimed at facilitating immigration of professionals who received only partial recognition and want to obtain full recognition in order to find a job in Germany that matches their skills. For this purpose, the Federal Government introduced a new residence permit.
Following the revised EU Professional Qualifications Directive of 2013, the federal government made the application procedures for the assessment of foreign professional qualifications even simpler.
More than 44,130 applications for recognition of foreign professional qualifications were processed in 2022 in Germany. In most cases, full or partial equivalence could be certified in 2022. Only 2 percent of the applicants received a negative decision.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil and Colombia, three new counselling centres for the recognition of professional qualifications will be opened. In addition, the existing counselling services in Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Italy, Poland and Vietnam will be further expanded. Over the next four years, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research will fund the "ProRecognition" project with almost 8 million euros - twice as much as in the first funding phase.
The Federal Statistical Office has published the recognition figures for 2022. In 2022, for the first time since Corona, the Federal Statistical Office recorded significantly more recognitions. 52,300 people received their recognition notification in this country. This is an increase of 11% compared to 2021. The number of new applications also rose sharply, by 13% compared to the previous year. This development is enormously important for Germany: Most companies face immense skills shortages.
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.
In most OECD European countries and in the United States, labour migration in 2022 was at a 15 year record level. Year-on-year increases in the primary destination countries were striking: the number of new permanent-type labour migrants increased by 59% in Germany.
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 data published today by the Federal Statistical Office, more and more applications for professional recognition are being filed in. In 2017, some 25,000 new applications were submitted (a 9 percent increase over the previous year) and 21,800 qualifications were recognized (a 14 percent increase over the previous year). Since the Recognition Act came into effect in 2012, some 111,500 applications for the recognition of foreign professional qualifications were submitted, the Federal Statistical Office reports.