Given the current shortage of qualified manpower in the ICT field across Europe, many jobs cannot be filled by residents of Luxembourg or of the greater Luxembourg region.
Although many initiatives have been implemented to increase the training opportunities in Luxembourg for these new professions in order to find a lasting solution to the shortage of qualified workers that the country is facing today, the government has decided, while waiting for these initiatives to bear fruit, to change tack by easing the conditions for obtaining the “Blue Card” in the sectors involved.
An acceleration of the application process and a reduction of the wage threshold enabling access to the “Blue Card” should thus enable companies in Luxembourg, and in particular SMEs, to recruit more easily the highly qualified IT specialists that they need from non-EU countries.
The lowering of the wages threshold in order to obtain a European Blue Card specifically covers eight professions linked to the telecoms and IT sectors: mathematicians, actuaries and statisticians, systems analysts, designers of software applications, programmers, designers of web sites and multimedia applications, database specialists, systems administrators and network administrators.
It is even possible to recruit citizens of non-EU countries under the threshold imposed by the Blue Card if a certificate issued by ADEM confirms that no job seeker registered in Luxembourg is able to take on the position in question.
