Germany’s lower house devoted a two-hour plenary slot on 22 July to the first reading of the government’s draft “Act on the Further Development of Skilled-Worker Immigration.” The bill is the centre-piece of Berlin’s plan to close a projected gap of 7 million workers by 2035. Key innovations include a streamlined points-based ‘Talent Card’ for non-EU professionals, faster recognition of foreign qualifications, and a new pathway that lets accredited staffing agencies place licensed tradespeople directly with German SMEs. The Interior and Labour Ministries also propose doubling the quota for Western Balkans workers to 100,000 per year and lowering German-language requirements for IT specialists. Coalition MPs praised the draft as a “quantum leap” that will align Germany with Canadian and Australian best practice. The opposition CDU/CSU warned of bureaucratic overload for local immigration offices and called for clearer labour-market tests to protect domestic job-seekers. Industry groups such as the Federation of German Industries (BDI) back the bill but demand digital end-to-end visa processing and stricter service-level agreements at consulates. For corporate mobility managers the bill holds promise: provisional residence permits could be issued within two weeks for candidates recruited via Make-it-in-Germany fairs, while dependants would receive automatic work rights. Critics, however, note that many reforms hinge on Länder IT upgrades—an area where past deadlines have slipped. The bill now moves to committee stage; the coalition aims for passage before the Bundestag’s autumn recess so that the Talent Card pilot can launch on 1 January 2027. Employers recruiting for the 2027 planning cycle should therefore start mapping job profiles to the proposed points grid and updating relocation budgets to reflect shorter lead times.
