Italia In Tasca

It is not easy to find a job in Italy, both for the Italian citizens and for the foreign ones. The unemployment rate varies according to the regions, but job, like in many other European countries, remains a problem for young people and for the State.
Numerous are the young people, above all in the south of the country, who don't manage to find a stable job and that adapt themselves, therefore, to make irregular jobs, badly paid, not regularized.
It is, therefore, more difficult also for a foreign young person to find a job, above all for those who have no educational qualifications, experience or sufficient knowledge of the Italian language.

The freedom to work within the UE is one of the base rights sanctioned by the institutive treaty of the European Community that guarantees to every citizen the freedom to live, to work, to look for a job, to start an enterprise and to supply services in whichever State member. Therefore, each worker of the Union has the right to carry out a subordinated activity in whichever State member, no matter its place of residence, at the same conditions of the citizens of the country.
They can enrol in federal employment agency lists benefiting from the same assistance offered to the national unemployed. The knowledge of a language can be a condition for job access.
By the law the European citizens who mean to work in Italy can look for a job for a limited period of time (3 months); in case of a longer stay it is necessary to prove the effective possibility to find a job and applying for a residence permit.
The residence permit can be applied for through police headquarters or post offices (with the EU citizen kit). It is valid for five years and is renewable.
It is also a pre-requisite when setting up one’s own business, but you have to register yourself at Chamber of Commerce or at an equivalent institution.
Those who want to start up a company have to prove to have experience in the field, at least a three year work experience. UE citizens can carry out their own economic or professional business maintaining the main centre of the activity in the country of origin (free performance of services).
Therefore as well as it occurs for the employees, to carry out an independent business in another country of the Union gives the right to live there. For stays of over three months this right has to be proved by the issuing a statement of stay for citizen of a State member.
The access to the professions in Public Administration is free to all the communitarian citizens but except for the activities that provide for the exercise of public powers or for the ones regarding the safeguard of the general interests of the State (Armed Forces, police, justice, diplomacy, fiscal administration...). But it is indispensable to know the Italian language well and you should remember that, with the exception of some short time contracts, you can have access to the public function just passing a competition.
In case of exclusion from a public competition of a UE citizen in Italy it is possible to make an appeal before the TAR (Regional Administrative Tribunal) within 60 days from the notification.

It’s necessary to request an entry visa motivated by work, to Italian Consular offices in your country. These visas are issued according to a decree of the Presidence of the Council of Ministers. It establishes how many incomes in Italy every year are granted (see Ministry of the job’s official site) for dependent job, at short length time or long length time, independent job and seasonal job.
The categories defined by law are excluded from the annual quotas, such as:
- highly specialized staff of foreign companies having offices of representation in Italy;
- university lecturers, university professors and research students who have to carry out in Italy a paid academic assignment or an activity of research;
- translators and interpreters;
- sea workers or workers in circus or travelling shows abroad;
- artistic and technical staff for lyric, theatre, concert shows or of ballet;
- foreign people who have to carry out whichever type of professional sport activity;
- journalists correspondents officially recognized in Italy;
- professional nurses engaged in public and private sanitary structures.

With the new Law of the 30/7/2002 n.189 the duration of the residence permit depends closely on the real duration of the job. The residence permit for job reasons is issued after the stipulation of the working contract. It has the duration fixed from the stay contract and however can't last over nine months in case of one or more seasonal working contract, a year in the case of a short time subordinated working contract and two years for a long time contract.
The residence permit can be renewed on request. To request or renew it, go to the post offices indicated as “Sportello Amico”, which carry out permesso di soggiorno services.
Just after six years' stay rather, the foreign person can obtain the residence permit that has not an expiry date.

The Law provides for the institution in every Province of a Unique Centre for Immigration, at the Prefecture - Territorial Office of the Government, that takes care entirely of the engagement of non communitarian workers coming from abroad and at which the stay contract for job purposes will have to be undersigned from both the parts. It is the Unique Centre for immigration to carry out bureaucratic practices for the engagement, both at short time and long time.

The employer will have to present a nominative application of job permit for the person he wants to engage at the Unique Center. Moreover he will have to provide adequate documentation regarding the accomodation formalities that he means to offer to the future employee, the proposal of the "stay contract" and the relative conditions including the engagement, once concluded the working relationship, to pay the return journey of the foreign worker to his Country of origin.

If the employer does not know the future employee, then he will have to apply to the Centre specifying the type of labour he needs and the working treatment that means to offer. The Unique Centre for immigration communicates the request to the competent zone Employment Centre which will start to look for staff.
If within twenty days, no application of national or communitarian worker has been presented, the Centre transmits to the demanding Unique Centre a negative certification.
The Unique Centre, within a maximumof forty days from the presentation of the request, and after having consulted the police superintendent, issues the subordinated job permit in compliance with the numerical, quantitative and qualitative limits.
The subordinated job permit will have validity for not over six months from the issuing date. The Italian consular offices in the foreign person's Country of residence or origin will issue the entry visa. Within eight days from the entrance, the foreign person must go to the Unique Centre for the immigration that has issued the permit, for signing the stay contract.

The loss of the workplace, also for dismissal, does not bring on the revocation of the residence permit to the non communitarian worker: he can enroll in the placement lists for the residual period of validity of the permit, and however, for a period not inferior to six months.

For further information, call at toll number 800/196196 of the Ministry of Labour, from Monday to Friday from 9 to 20.

Such procedure, provided for by the mentioned norm, is waiting for a regulation that will be able to confirm or to modify what has been explained in the previous chapters.

The professional recognition of diplomas allows foreign citiziens, that have qualifications obtained in their country, of the UE or not adhering to the UE, to do their own activity in an other State. Italy has adopted a system that includes:

The cases of recognition of foreign professional educational qualifications in Italy regard:

Professional educational qualifications got in the Countries of the European Union
The base principle in force in the European Union is that if you are qualified in the country of origin to carry on a certain profession this qualification is valid also to carry on the profession in another country of the Union.
Those who wish to exercise in other countries of the European Union a profession (teacher, lawyer, engineer, psychologist) that is regulated in the country of origin, will have to get a recognition of their diploma making a request to the competent authorities of the welcoming country that have four months of time to take a decision. In case of doctors, nurses responsible for the general assistance, dentists, obstetrician, veterinaries, druggists or architects in all the countries of the European Union they can have an automatic recognition. If the profession is not regulated in the welcoming country, the recognition of diplomas is not necessary and legal obstacles cannot be raised.

In order to know which professions are regulated in the states members you should address to NARIC net - National Academic Recognition Information Centres (http://www.enic-naric.net/) where it is possible to have information about the recognition of your professional educational qualification.
For Italy the Information Centre on Mobility and Academic Equivalences (CIMEA) is a service of the Rui Foundation. The information service offered by CIMEA is daily carried out by letter; it is possible also to telephone or to ask for a personal talk (on appointment), on Monday or on Tuesday, from 9.00 to 13.00.

Otherwise you can address to a professional organization that represents the profession at issue in the State member of origin.
An example of regulated professions can be found on the User's Guide of the general system of recognition of the professional qualifications, published by the

The recognition application must be made to the competent national authority (see underneath) of the welcoming State. The recognition application will be examined comparing the professional education obtained in the State member of origin with the one requested in the State member. On the whole the professional qualifications will be recognized exactly the same; in case remarkable differences are stated the competent authority can subordinate the recognition to the satisfaction of further requirements.
Within 30 days from the application reception the authority assesses the thoroughness of the documentation produced communicating to the person concerned eventual necessary integrations.
The person concerned can be asked, in some specific cases, to do an adaptation training (of maximum three years) or to pass a vocational test.
The authority deals with the recognition emanating a decree within four months from the presentation of the application.
The decree of recognition attributes to the beneficiary the right to access to the profession (enrolling himself in the professional register) and to exercise it in the respect of the requested conditions
from the enforced norm to the citizens of the welcoming country.

You can have further information contacting the following national authority competent in particular as regards the application of the EEC Directives:

The Italian authorities competent for the recognition of the professional certificates are, generally, the competent ministries, of which you find the addresses for the most widespread professions:

* For the professions of stockbrokers; agrotechnicians; social workers; actuaries; lawyers and proxies lawyers; biologist; chemists; agronomists; business consultants; forest doctors; geologist; geometricians; journalists; engineers; agrarian experts; industrial experts psychologists; accountants and trade experts; alimentary technologists:

*For the professions in public employment (except for teachers and the sanitary field):

*For Teachers of state maternal , elementary and secondary schools and in the artistic institutes (included Conservatory, Academies of Fine Arts, Isia)

*For Architects, Research students in university or other public research agencies:

If you carry on some independent professions like the one of hairdresser's, insurance agent or trader, or a profession in the building field and you want to move to another State member where these professions demand a particular qualification, you need to prove to have practised such activity for a determined number of years at a communitarian level, in most of the cases for 5-6 years.

Professional certificates obtained in non communitarian Countries
The European directives concerning the recognition of certificates and the related legislative decree that in Italy have put into force the same directives, are applied to each foreign citizien who asks for it.
The application of the European directives in the cases of recognition of professional certificates obtained in non-communitarian countries implies some additional formalities under the profile of the documentation that must be presented: information and forms can be found on the page http://www.giustizia.it/professioni/indice.htm of the Italian Department of Justice.
The facsimile of recognition application varies according to the fact that the same application is presented by a regularly living foreign citizen in Italy or by a foreign citizen that sends the application from the foreign country, and that means to use the recognition of the professional certificate with a view to obtaining the entry visa in Italy for independent job.
In the latter case, the foreign person must ask to the Department of Justice for the declaration that there are no obstacles to the issue of the certificate qualifying for the exercise of the professional activity. Moreover the professional and educational qualifications whose recognition is asked, must be presented in original copy and legalized by the competent Italian diplomatic or consular representation in the Country where the document has been written down.

For information you should address to:

In order to know the state bilateral and multilateral agreements stipulated by Italy on the recognition of the educational qualifications: http://www.esteri.it/ita/4_28_67_81_94.asp

The non communitarian people can ask the recognition limitedly to the number of foreign people annually admitted on the national territory.

The communitarian citizens who are looking for a job in another State of the European Union can avail of the services of the Eures net instituted thanks to the collaboration between the European Commission and the national job administrations.

The net is made of beyond 500 Eures advisers available in all the Union, let alone in Norway and Island, that have the task to inform, to advise and to help all those who intend to look for a job in another country of the European Economic Area. For this reason they can take advantage of two databases: one containing the international employment offers available in all the States members of the European Union, the other helping us to have a precise idea on the job and living conditions existing in the 17 countries of the net.
On the page http://europa.eu.int/eures/index.jsp it is possible to find the addresses of the Eures advisers in all the adherent countries.
An internal search engine gives the possibility to look for the job offers. The one who is looking for a job and the one who has to offer a workplace can be put into contact by inserting themselves in the data base on line.

Always through the page of Eures it is possible to find information and the addresses of the job services: in Italy it corresponds to the site of the Ministry of Labour. Inside some useful indications for the job research are given, general information and useful references on the national territory.

The EU Youth Portal has a section devoted to work with many clearly explained links, in addition to information on rights, housing and study.

For having information, guidance and advice for education and job and for having an active intermediation between job offer and demand it is useful to address to public or private information points such as:

It is also possible to answer to the announcements published in the generic or specialized Italian press, here are some titles of example:

Information and job offer can be found in the sites. They also publish a self-regulatory and professional ethical code, which aims to ensure that the services offered are free, fair and transparent. Ensuring the confidentiality of personal information out of respect for an individual’s rights and basic freedoms. As an alternative to this code or endorsement of its contents, the Ministry of Labour has given authorization.