RELOCATING EMPLOYEES TO ITALY

​Employee/personnel relocation to Italy appears when an employee is relocated from one company to another. This can happen at a national level, where a company in Italy transfers an employee to its subsidiary (branch) working in another region of Italy, or it can happen at an international level.

WHAT IS THE LEGAL PROCEDURE FOR INTERNATIONAL EMPLOYEE RELOCATION TO ITALY?

When we refer to immigration to Italy for employment, there are many options foreigners can have. One of them is transferring an employee working in a company outside Italy to a company operating in Italy.
Here, two aspects have to be clarified. 

• The company abroad must be located outside the European Union (EU),
• the company operating in Italy must have a particular connection to the company abroad.

For instance, the foreign company can be the parent company, while the Italian one can be an affiliated company, a branch office or a subsidiary.
Typically, this system is known as intra-company transfer (ICT) and is used for employee/personnel relocation to Italy.

The ICT system is addressed only to a few categories of employees, as regulated by the law. These employees can be:

1. managers;
2. specialists;
3. Trainees.

WHAT ARE THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF ICT IN ITALY?

The conditions foreign employees must comply with fall within the scope of the law for immigration to Italy and the EU Directives, which are implemented in Italy.

Therefore, you can find out below some of the main characteristics of the ICT system, as established for Italy (in other countries, other requirements can be available):

Employee/personnel relocation to Italy is possible for the three categories mentioned above if each class has completed a minimum of three months of employment in the parent company abroad;

The principal regulations for ICT in Italy are given by Articles 3 and 5 of the Directive 2014/66/EU;

For ICT to Italy to take place, the company working in Italy must announce the Italian prefectures, which must issue a decision within 45 days of the announcement being made;

The visa issued for the ICT is valid for a minimum of 1 year, but it can be extended (1 year for trainees and three years for the other two categories of employees);

The law on immigration to Italy states that once the foreigner has arrived in this country, they are obliged to announce the prefecture in a maximum of 8 days regarding the arrival to obtain a residence permit.

Please remember that ICT can also be available at an EU level, implying that a person working in an EU state will relocate for employment in another EU state (Italy, in this case). Still, for this scenario, there aren’t immigration procedures to follow because the parties involved are EU states.
However, even EU employees working in Italy will need to apply for a residence permit, which is required for foreign nationals, regardless of nationality. This is also a rule applicable anywhere else in the world.

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