Albanians now leave to work, the EU granted 39 thousand permits in two years, Germany leads

In 2023, Germany granted nearly 5,000 residence permits for the first time to Albanian citizens who went to work in the destination that is attracting more professionals recently.

The data are published in the Eurostat database.
While Italy leads in general for residence permits granted in total, when it comes to employment it is Germany that has taken the lead for the first time.

Doctors, nurses, IT specialists and others are leaving their jobs in Albania and immigrating with regular contracts to Germany. The latter has granted 10,000 residence permits for employment reasons in just 2 years (2022-2023).

Italy has become the second country that gives more residence permits to those who want to work. The neighboring country issued 3,200 permits, a decrease of 44% compared to the previous year. The third is Greece, with 2838 ALL, with a contraction of 8%.

Favorites are Croatia and Malta

Two other destinations that are proving attractive for Albanian employees are Croatia and Malta. Since 2019, Croatia has issued an average of about 2,000 new residence permits for employment reasons to Albanian citizens. Sources from the market claim that they work mainly in construction, because of the good wages, or in tourism in the season.

Malta is the other country that is attracting Albanians to work, mainly in tourism. In 2022 Malta issued over 1,800 permits, while in 2023 their number fell to almost a thousand. Poland (772), Slovakia (668), France (580), Sweden (303) are ranked after Malta.

In two years, 39,000 residence permits were granted to those who fled to work

The new wave of emigration seems to be oriented to a large extent by direct employment, in addition to family reasons, which have historically dominated (in 2023 they accounted for 55% of the total).

In 2013, leave granted for employment reasons accounted for 12% of the total, while in 2022-2023 they accounted for around 25%, according to Eurostat data.

The total number of first-time residence permits granted by EU countries to Albanian citizens who want to work has increased significantly since the pandemic. In 2022, the highest record level was reached, at least since 2013 when the data is reported, at 21 thousand. In 2023, 17.6 thousand permits were issued.

In just two years, EU countries have granted almost 39,000 residence permits to Albanian citizens who fled to work.

In 2023, a total of 75,000 residence permits were granted from EU countries

According to Eurostat, in 2023, around 75,000 residence permits were granted to Albanian citizens from EU countries. A year ago, 79,200 residence permits were granted for the first time (the figure has been revised upwards by about 4,000 people, from the reporting of the previous year).

These are the highest levels since 2010, indicating an acceleration of immigration rates after the pandemic./ Monitor