The EU Blue Card, explained honestly: where it helps, and where it does not exist

The EU Blue Card gets talked about as if it were a single European work visa. It is not. It is a permit that some EU countries issue under a shared set of rules, for graduates with a job offer above a salary threshold. Two of our three countries do not take part in it at all. Here is what it is worth to you.

Ireland and Denmark do not issue it

Ireland and Denmark both opted out of the EU directive that created the Blue Card. Neither country issues one. If you want to work in Dublin or Copenhagen you use their national permits: the Irish Critical Skills or General Employment Permit, the Danish Pay Limit or Positive List schemes. Anyone offering you a Blue Card for Ireland or Denmark is confused or lying.

The Netherlands issues it, at the same bar as the highly skilled migrant permit

For 2026 the IND requires €5,942 gross a month for a Blue Card, the same as for a highly skilled migrant aged 30 or over. There is a reduced figure of €4,754 for graduates who apply within three years of finishing. The Blue Card also requires a recognised higher education degree of at least three years, evaluated by Nuffic, which the highly skilled migrant permit does not.

So in the Netherlands the Blue Card is usually the harder of the two to get and rarely the better one. Employers use the highly skilled migrant permit by default.

When the Blue Card is worth asking for

• You may want to move to another Blue Card country later, such as Germany, and carry some of your time with you.
• You are under 30 but the employer is not a recognised sponsor and will not become one; a Blue Card can in principle be applied for by an unrecognised employer, though in practice most are recognised anyway.
• You are aiming at long-term EU residence, where Blue Card time in several countries can be added together.

Germany, and why it is not on this site yet

Germany is the biggest Blue Card issuer in Europe and publishes no sponsor list of any kind: any employer can hire you if the salary meets the threshold. That means the checks this site runs, against a government list, do not exist for Germany. We are building a different engine for it, based on the job ad and the salary alone, and it will appear here when it is honest enough to show.