Italy's migration cooperation agreements and reserved quotas

Article 21 of Italy's immigration consolidated act (D.Lgs. 286/1998) allows preferential quota places to be reserved for nationals of countries that have concluded migration cooperation agreements with Italy. The DPCM of 2 October 2025 uses that power and, according to the Ministry of Labour, gives that channel its own date, 16 February 2026.

For anyone planning a corridor this clause changes the arithmetic in a concrete way. It does not alter the procedure or the documents. It alters the probability that an application still finds an open place in the pool, and that probability is the real constraint in the decreto flussi.

Which countries qualify, and why

The list is annexed to the decree and moves with the agreements the government signs. In the current programming it includes, among others, Albania, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, the Philippines, India, Morocco, Moldova, Pakistan, Senegal, Tunisia and Ukraine. These are states with which Italy has signed arrangements covering readmission, action against irregular intermediation and, in the more recent cases, labour mobility proper.

The most relevant example for industrial corridors is the migration and mobility agreement between Italy and India, signed in 2023, which sets a framework for regular entry of workers and students alongside cooperation on return. It is why an Indian turner and a Nepali turner with the same profile and the same contract do not stand in the same queue.

The table shows why the advantage is one of sequence, not substance. Two days ahead does not sound like much until you notice that in some categories the pool empties within hours of opening.

What to do when the origin country is not listed

Nepal does not appear among the countries with migration cooperation agreements with Italy, and the same applies to several other South Asian recruitment markets. That does not close the corridor. It moves it onto the ordinary channel, with the later opening date and full competition for the pool.

Three levers remain, all of them provided by Italian law.

The first is article 23 of the consolidated act, which gives a preference to workers who have completed education and vocational training programmes in their country of origin approved by the Italian authorities. Certified training in welding or machine tools, completed before departure, is not only a technical assurance for the employer: it is a factor the statute rewards at the point of access.

The second is the seasonal channel, which carries a larger pool and its own return dynamic, described in the guide to seasonal work in Italy.

The third is the choice of destination country. An employer operating in several member states can place a Nepali cohort where an active bilateral agreement with Kathmandu exists and keep the Italian places for listed countries. The map of Nepal's agreements with European countries sits in the guide to Nepal's bilateral labour agreements.

What the agreement does not guarantee

A migration cooperation agreement is not a work permit and it replaces no step. The application is still filed on the ALI portal, the nulla osta is still issued by the Sportello Unico per l'Immigrazione within the sixty day term set by article 22, the consulate still issues the visa within thirty days, and the residence contract is still signed within eight days of entry. The cost items do not change either: the 16 euro duty stamp, the 30.46 euro electronic permit and the 30.46 euro postal service listed by the Ministry of the Interior all remain.

Only the place in the queue changes, and that is worth stating plainly because the opposite promise circulates freely at the sales stage. No bilateral arrangement makes an entry automatic, and none skips the quota allocation described in the guide to the 2026 to 2028 quotas.

Werklist runs corridors into Europe from Nepal, India and the Philippines and checks for each one whether the origin country sits in the annex to the decree before volumes are fixed. The employers page sets out what information that check needs. In Italy the country of origin is not only a sourcing variable. It is a calendar variable.