Nasscom lobbies for single work visa for EU

Software industry body Nasscom has approached the European Union (EU) for a single work visa for IT workers to enable employees of Indian companies to move freely across the 27-member regional grouping. The current regulations require Indian IT workers to have visas issued at home for every EU country they visit.

In effect, an IT worker, with an Indian passport on a supply chain management project for a company that has offices in Italy, France and Germany, needs work visas from the three countries. If he doesn’t have a visa from any one of these countries, he needs to come back to India and apply for one.

With business from Europe going up by 45% in the past three years for these IT companies, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has now approached the world’s most advanced economic bloc for a pan-EU renewable work permit with a validity of at least 12 months.

“A single work visa will help ease the situation,” said V Balakrishnan, CFO of Infosys Technologies. Europe accounts for 28% of Infosys’ revenues of around $5 billion, and the country’s second-largest technology services company says its revenues from the continent have a potential to grow to 40% in a few years.

The Nasscom presentation asks the European Commission to consider a common work visa for intra-corporate transferees. This could be like the tier-II intra-corporate transferee visa issued by the UK or the L1 visa issued by the US for intra-company transfer of workers on projects with global companies.

The association also wants that the scope of the visa should not be limited to one client — Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands follow such a policy — but allow the employee to provide services to multiple clients. Nasscom hasn’t asked the Indian government for help.

Today, it takes between one week and six months to get a work visa for EU countries. In case of the Czech Republic, it can take up to six months to get a work visa while for Romania, getting just an appointment for a visa can take up to 18 weeks, said an HR head of a mid-level technology services company, who did not wish to be named.

This wasn’t a problem till recently as Europe — outside the UK — accounted for less than 10% of the IT services revenues. However, now that continental Europe is more open to third-party sourcing, particularly from Indian companies, a lack of a common work visa is turning out to be an unnecessary administrative hurdle.

“When they have a common currency and a common tourist visa, why not allow free movement of workers?” said Ameet Nivsarkar, vice-president for global trade and development at Nasscom. Schengen visa allows tourists to Europe travel freely in the EU countries.

TCS, the country’s largest IT company, saw continental Europe contribute 11% to its revenues in the first quarter of 2009-10, and sees an upswing in work from continental Europe.

“Not having a single work visa across EU nations leads to compliance challenges, different processing times and mobility challenges. The new common work permit known as the EU Blue Card will offer IT professionals and people from other high-skilled professions’ employability across EU member countries,” said Ajoy Mukherjee, vice-president and head of global HR at TCS.

While Blue Card, which will be implemented by 2011, will address issues related to working in the EU, Nasscom says it has limitations. “Blue Card is primarily to address worker shortage in Europe and does not address the problem of employees going on projects via intra-company transfers. This is why a common work permit for continental Europe is desired,” said Mr Nivsarkar.