The European Commission proposes a new directive with the aim of facilitating for multinational companies to temporarily transfer third-country national skilled workers from a company located outside the EU to branches or subsidiaries in EU Member States.

"We need a European approach on labour migration that allows our economies to receive the migrants they need ", said Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Home Affairs."Multinational companies operating in Europe need access to the right people, with the right skills, at the right time, but such key personnel are not always available locally. The need for these companies to be able to temporarily transfer workers to and within the EU has become more crucial in recent years. These intra-corporate transferees bring with them specialist knowledge and skills to Europe, which in turn contributes to strengthening the European economy and attracting further investments in Member States."

Intra-corporate transferees are a highly relevant category of workers for the EU economy: they are typically specialists and managers, possessing sought-after knowledge specific to the company, for whom no substitute could be found. The transfer of these qualified employees to the EU has the potential to increase investment flows, strengthen management effectiveness, expand EU exports, and enhance the competitiveness of EU entities in overseas markets as well as the competitiveness of the Union as a whole, which could help to achieve the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

However, barriers to such temporary migrations remain. Companies outside the EU are faced with a multitude of different rules and procedures when they want to send key staff to their subsidiaries within the different EU Member States. In addition, procedures for getting work permits in some EU countries are slow and complex and intra-corporate transferees face difficulties in moving between Member States.

The Commission proposes to create a common set of rules for a new fast-track entry procedure (30 days time-limit, combined residence/work permit) for a targeted group of highly specialised staff (‘manager’, ‘specialist’ and ‘graduate trainee') from non-EU countries.

The proposal also aims at establishing more attractive residence conditions for these staff and their families and an easier system for non-EU transferees to facilitate their mobility within the EU. This would be complemented by a clear legal status including the same working conditions as workers posted by an EU company.

EU Member States would remain competent to decide on numbers of transferees and provisions are foreseen to ensure the temporary feature of the migrations (3 years maximum for specialists and managers, 1 year for graduate trainees).