Albania's Blue Card AL and the EU Blue Card are two separate schemes

The Blue Card AL is the Albanian single permit for highly qualified workers, set out in article 65 of law no. 79/2021 on foreigners. The name resembles the EU Blue Card, but the document does not derive from Directive 2021/1883 and confers no right anywhere inside the Union.

That misunderstanding is worth clearing at the start of any recruitment conversation. An engineer holding a Blue Card AL works in Albania under Albanian law. To work in Germany or the Netherlands the same engineer needs a permit from that state, under the rules described in the EU Blue Card directive.

The conditions of the Blue Card AL

Article 65, point 1, ties the document to prior approval from the National Employment and Skills Agency for qualified workers. Point 3/1, added by law no. 43/2025 of 26 June 2025, sets the pay condition: the foreign national obtains a Blue Card AL if the employment contract states an average annual gross salary at least equal to the national average annual gross wage.

That threshold is not a figure written into the statute but a statistical reference that moves every quarter. According to INSTAT, the average gross monthly wage was 92,150 lekë in the second quarter of 2026 and 90,119 lekë in the first, a yearly rise of 9.6 percent. Annualised, the second quarter reference works out at roughly 1,105,800 lekë gross. An employer drafting a contract at the edge of the threshold will see it fall below once the next quarter's statistics are published.

Point 3/2 of the same article allows a list of occupations for which the pay condition does not apply, to be set by instruction of the minister responsible for employment and the minister responsible for the economy. Before building an offer on that exemption, confirm that the occupation is genuinely on the approved list.

The comparison that matters for procurement

The last two rows are the ones that change the decision. Intra Union mobility is the main reason highly qualified candidates ask for the EU Blue Card. The Blue Card AL does not offer it, and it should not be presented as an intermediate step towards it.

Article 66 lists the categories excluded from the Blue Card AL, among them applicants for international protection, people under temporary protection schemes, and refugees whose claim has no final decision. For highly qualified workers, article 74, point 7, lightens the review: approval is granted on compliance with labour legislation and the requirements of the special articles alone, without proof that the domestic market cannot fill the post.

When it is worth it and when it is not

The Blue Card AL makes sense when the position holds the pay threshold without bending and when the stay is multi year. Two years plus a three year renewal is a steadier horizon than the employee single permit of article 57, which is granted for the length of the contract or job offer.

For a technical post paid below the national average, the ordinary route remains the employee single permit, with the same deadlines: five calendar days of public posting under article 74, point 9, one working day of AKPA approval under the joint instruction of August 2026, and four weeks for the decision under article 56, point 4. The full steps are in the Albanian single permit procedure, and the priority candidate filter is in AKPA employment approval.

The cost comparison is simple. On gross pay the employer pays 16.7 percent in contributions, about 15,400 lekë a month for pay at the national average. If the position needs only a two year horizon and not the highly qualified status, the one thing the Blue Card AL buys is term stability, not speed. How Werklist picks the scheme for each position is set out on the employers page.

The shared name creates expectations that neither document meets in the other. When a candidate asks for European mobility, the conversation has to start from the destination member state, not from Tirana.