The Czech Republic urgently needs to accelerate its efforts in attracting foreign specialists if it wants to improve its image. To address this issue, the Ministry of the Interior is preparing an amendment to the law on the residence of foreigners in the country.
The proposed legislation aims to simplify, expedite, and streamline the process of obtaining a residence permit. The objective is to make it more transparent, less bureaucratic, cost-effective, and beneficial to the Czech economy, which is currently facing a shortage of domestic workers.
The amendment, expected to be submitted to the government and parliament by the end of this year and enacted by mid-2025, also includes provisions for digitalizing the issuance of residence permits. This measure aims to eliminate manual transcription errors, reduce unnecessary form submissions between government agencies, and minimize the need for foreigners to make multiple visits to obtain required stamps.
Additionally, the amendment introduces innovations such as the introduction of a sponsor responsible for foreigners. It seeks to enhance transparency throughout the entire procedure for a foreigner’s stay and strengthen their position in interactions with national authorities.
According to Pavla Novotna, Director of the Department of Asylum and Migration Policy at the Ministry of Interior, “Under the new law, only lawyers who assist foreigners for free and are registered in the Ministry of Interior’s list (known as guarantors or representatives) will be able to represent the interests of foreigners.” This move addresses concerns about lawyers acting against their clients’ best interests and charging excessive fees for their services.
Introduction of Guarantor
The concept of a guarantor is a new addition to the amendment of the Act on the Residence of Foreigners (Act No. 326/1999 Coll.). A guarantor is an entity that verifies the purpose of a foreigner’s stay in the Czech Republic for the purpose of applying for a residence permit. Examples of potential guarantors include schools, employers, educational institutions, research organizations, sports clubs, and cultural institutions.
The functions of a guarantor include online access to information on the progress and outcome of proceedings involving the foreigner, an overview of all foreigners for whom they act as a guarantor, increased accountability through issuing a guarantor’s certificate, and the obligation to notify the administrative authority when a foreigner’s purpose of stay ceases or terminates.
Lack of domestic labour
While companies in the Czech Republic that are seeking to attract foreign workers due to a shortage of domestic labor welcome efforts to simplify the residency program, they believe that individual amendments and digitalization within a single agency will have limited impact.
The complex nature of the immigration process in the Czech Republic is compounded by multiple ministries (Foreign Affairs, Labor and Social Affairs, Interior, and Industry) dealing with the issue independently. Therefore, partial amendments would only address a small portion of the overall immigration process.
Jaroslava Rezlerova, CEO of the recruitment company ManpowerGroup Czech Republic, suggests that a comprehensive approach is needed, where ministers from all relevant ministries collaborate to establish a unified path. This would prevent each ministry from pursuing its own program or digitalization of the immigration system. Rezlerova emphasizes the importance of having a coordinator to streamline the process effectively.
Compared to 14 selected OECD countries, the Czech Republic lags behind in the global competition for foreign workers. The country’s residency permit process is the most convoluted among these nations. While foreigners in the Czech Republic can obtain a permanent residence permit after five years of continuous residence, they must first renew their long-term residence permit twice, requiring them to go through the entire procedure three times. In contrast, other countries typically require only one or two applications for a long-term residence permit.
Another significant challenge is the Czech legal system’s inability to facilitate the process of obtaining a residence permit, even for highly skilled individuals who could contribute substantial value to the Czech economy. Countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, and Estonia can grant permanent residence permits immediately to selected workers, but this is not currently possible in the Czech Republic.
Highly skilled workers provide an economic boost through their earnings, tax contributions, and expenditures. Furthermore, they often bring additional expertise that supports and promotes development, thereby transforming the Czech Republic’s image from a mere assembly plant to a high-tech country. However, the absence of such individuals raises concerns among multinational companies considering whether to establish or maintain their centers in the Czech Republic.
Jonathan Appleton, director of ABSL (an association of IT, business, and customer service firms employing approximately 160,000 skilled workers), highlights the reasons why many investors prefer to establish IT or business services centers with hundreds of skilled jobs in other countries. These reasons include high labor taxation, increasing overall operating costs, a scarcity of human resources, and difficulties in hiring foreigners. Appleton estimates that if a quarter of the industry relocates overseas, the Czech government would lose over 13 billion kroner annually in fees alone.
One of the biggest challenges in employing foreigners is the lengthy process of attracting foreign specialists to the Czech Republic, which often leads to potential candidates changing their minds. Despite official statistics from the Ministry of the Interior indicating that the process for positive work permit applications and specialist selection takes 46 to 63 days, the actual duration is typically much longer.
Jaromír Staroba, president of ABSL and director of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Prague brewery center, states, “In our experience, the migration process takes six to nine months for workers from India and four to five months for people from the UK. We compete with Poland and Romania, which means we lose a lot of employees because not everyone is willing to wait that long to move to the Czech Republic.”
Similar delays are reported by Tomas Szaszi, Director of Strategy and Development at Honeywell, who emphasizes the challenges faced by key employees waiting for lengthy clearance periods. Such delays can result in missed project opportunities and quantifiable profit losses.
While the amendment to the law does not aim to expedite the hiring of foreign workers, experts argue that a thorough review of the entire existing process and its associated tasks is necessary to accelerate the procedure. Key areas for improvement include recognizing electronic documents and transfers, reducing the burden on officials through faster data transfer and elimination of manual entry, and streamlining tasks within the Ministry of Interior and other relevant agencies. The amendment incorporates some of these functions, but a comprehensive approach is needed to achieve significant improvements.
