The lack of an approved quota for this year has led to an unprecedented situation for the Romanian labor market.
Our country has thus become completely inaccessible to foreign workers who want to work in our country and whose applications are currently being refused by the authorities.
The absence of the approved quota of foreign workers for the current year makes it impossible to continue recruiting the necessary workforce in vital economic sectors such as construction, agriculture, the hospitality industry and transportation. This situation risks creating significant bottlenecks in the economy as the shortage of skilled labor in Romania remains acute. Romanian employers have urgently requested an increase in the quota of foreign workers, given that the one previously set for 2024 has been completely exhausted, which demonstrates the real need for this step.
"The General Inspectorate for Immigration rejects requests for employers to issue work permits on the grounds that we do not have an approved quota for 2025. Normally, the quota for next year must be approved no later than October of this year," said Yosef Gavriel Peisakh, manager of a foreign labor recruitment agency.
Given that in a single month about 8000 work permits are normally issued, in the absence of requests for an extension of these settlements, we are talking about almost 8000 foreign workers who may miss the chance to come and work in Romania and for whom the entire bureaucratic process will have to be restarted once the new quota is approved.
This situation not only blocks the access of these workers to the Romanian labor market, but also creates the risk that many of them will opt for other destinations in the European Union, where the process of obtaining work permits and visas is much more efficient.
The "fast track" mechanism, implemented in other EU countries, allows documents to be processed quickly, considerably reducing waiting times. In contrast, Romania remains in a cumbersome bureaucratic framework, which not only discourages foreign workers but also affects local employers, who are already facing a significant labor shortage.
"At the moment, the quota of foreign workers approved for last year is 100% exhausted, and the fact that there is only one draft law at the moment that presents the possibility of a new quota of 100,000 new workers, does not help us anything. 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," added Yosef Gavriel Peisakh.
Romania's acute labor shortage can only be alleviated by recruiting and bringing in foreign workers, without which thousands of Romanian businesses will suffer.
