Foreign experts must be able to start working in the Netherlands within two weeks. This would ensure that Dutch universities be able to more quickly use the qualities of rare top specialists in sectors such as ICT and fundamental research.
Some sectors are currently short of such experts. The government hopes the new procedure, which should ensure that these specialists get a 4.5 year work permit within two weeks, will offset that on a short term.
The cabinet claims the acceleration is made possible by, for example, digitizing the permit requests. Moreover, top experts should be able to get residence and work permits at the same counter. Universities that want to import a foreign researcher will have to be well informed and guided.
This rule obviously does not apply citizens of the European Economic Area (EURO plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), for whom most barriers have already been removed.
