Romania's government has set a quota of 100,000 foreign workers for 2025, but the decision is still in the draft stage, according to information published by the Labor Ministry.
Pause on hiring foreign nationals in 2025
The law says that the number of workers should have been set as early as October 2024, but has been delayed for various reasons. With the new year and the exhaustion of the available quota for 2024, the import of foreign workers are pushing for faster adoption of new seats.
In the absence of an established quota, foreign workers can no longer come to Romania as their documents are refused by the General Inspectorate for Immigration. This leads to bottlenecks in the economy, as skilled workers in Romania are in very short supply, especially in vital sectors such as construction, agriculture, HoReCa and transportation.
Contacted to find out why the adoption of the new quota for foreign workers is taking so long, representatives of the Ministry of Labor said that the timing overlapped with the elections in the plenary of the Economic and Social Council.
"It has not yet entered the government because there has been a change of leadership at the ESC. The draft needed the opinion of the Economic and Social Council. There were elections at the ESC and because the appointment of the new plenary that can give the opinion has not been finalized and finalized. We depend on the ESC plenary. It overlapped with the reorganization there"he explained to FANATIK, the public information officer of the Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity.
The authorities sound the alarm
Representatives of recruitment agencies have sounded the alarm over the block on bringing in workers from Asian countries. With around 8,000 work permits being issued every month, prolonged applications may lead workers to choose other EU countries where the process of obtaining work permits and visas is more efficient.
The mechanism implemented in other EU countries, called "fast track", makes the processing of documents faster, with much shorter waiting times, in contrast to the red tape in Romania, which creates problems not only foreigners coming to work in our countrybut also to local employers facing an acute shortage of workers.
"At the moment the quota of foreign workers approved for last year is 100% exhausted, and the fact that there is only one bill at the moment that presents the possibility of a new quota of 100,000 new workers does not help us.
The real market need is at least 200,000 workers, and the lack of support from the authorities at the moment is making it massively difficult, if not impossible, to bring foreign labor into the country. Thousands of applications for work permits have been refused on this basis since the beginning of the year"explained Yosef Gavriel Gavriel Peisakh, General Manager of the foreign recruitment agency Work from Asia.
