Bulgaria's bilateral labour agreements and what they do not cover
Bulgaria holds labour migration agreements with Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and Israel, yet none replaces the permit under the Labour Migration Act or sets a cap.
Bulgaria is party to several bilateral instruments on labour migration. According to the Employment Agency these are the agreement with the State of Israel on mediation and temporary employment, and agreements regulating labour migration with Moldova, Armenia and Georgia. A separate arrangement with Germany's Federal Employment Agency covers vacation work for Bulgarian students.
What these agreements do not do matters more to an employer than what they do. They create no national quota, they do not replace the labour market access permit under the Labour Migration and Labour Mobility Act, and they open no visa free work route. A Moldovan national coming to work at a Bulgarian company travels the same road as a Nepali national.
What an agreement settles, and what stays under general law
| Question | Settled by the agreement | Stays under the Labour Migration and Aliens Acts |
|---|---|---|
| Channel for referring candidates | yes, through the competent employment services | |
| Document templates and recognition of qualifications | partly | |
| Social security coordination between the two states | where a separate social security agreement exists | |
| Labour market access permit | yes | |
| The 20 and 35 percent ratio | yes, absent an express exemption | |
| Labour market test | yes, absent an express exemption | |
| Type D visa and residence card | yes |
The exemption that genuinely works is narrow. Under the Labour Migration and Labour Mobility Act, employment arising from an international treaty to which Bulgaria is a party does not count towards the ratio and does not require a labour market test. That applies only where the treaty regulates the employment itself, not where it regulates cooperation between employment services. How the ratio is calculated and which cases sit outside it is covered in the 20 and 35 percent quota.
Why the flow looks treaty driven without being so
The statistics mislead exactly here. Employment Agency data show labour market access granted to 24,642 third country nationals in 2025, with the most common origin countries being Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, North Macedonia, India, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia and Moldova. Bulgaria has no labour migration agreement with Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan, and they sit at the top of the list. The flow follows demand and available intermediary capacity, not the existence of a treaty.
The other side of the same observation is in Eurostat data. Residence permits issued to third country nationals for employment reasons in Bulgaria rise from around 6,200 at the end of 2020 to around 20,900 at the end of 2024. Nepal moves from 4 permits in 2020 to around 1,400 in 2024, and Uzbekistan from 89 to around 3,000. Those jumps are the result of corridors built in practice, not of documents signed between governments.
The intermediary, the register, and where the offer falls apart
The Employment Agency maintains a register of private labour intermediaries. Registration is the condition for a company to carry out mediation activity, including under international agreements, and checking the register takes minutes. It is the only way to confirm a certificate number an agency quotes on its own website.
The draft amendment to the Labour Migration and Labour Mobility Act, put to public consultation from 8 to 22 January 2026, provides for a distinct legal framework for mediation services in the hiring of third country nationals. That is an admission that the grey zone sits in mediation rather than in the treaties. The same problem at the origin end, where licence verification is the first step, is covered in Nepal's bilateral agreements with Europe.
Here is the failure mode. An employer receives an offer from an intermediary for 30 workers from Moldova, argued on the basis that the agreement allows hiring "without a quota and without a labour market test", and that the price is therefore higher but the lead time two weeks. The employer signs and pays in advance. At filing, the Employment Agency checks the ratio and the justification under general rules, because the agreement governs referral rather than employment. The file comes back for a labour market test, which takes 15 days, and for a recalculation of the ratio. The start date moves by two months, and the advance has already been paid.
There is one check. Ask for the text of the treaty and for the provision the intermediary says removes the requirement. If no provision is identified, it does not exist. What a regime that genuinely moves the rules looks like is set out in seasonal work in Bulgaria. The terms on which Werklist verifies the legal basis before a demand letter is signed are set out on the employers page.
A bilateral agreement is a channel, not a shortcut. The difference between the two is measured in weeks, and the employer pays for it.
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