Intra-corporate transfer to Latvia: managers, specialists and trainees

An intra-corporate transfer moves a person a group already employs from a company outside the European Union into a related company in Latvia. Under the Immigration Law in force since 15 September 2026 the permit runs for up to one year for a manager or a specialist, and up to one year for a trainee. The 2002 law allowed three years for the first two, so a secondment costed against the old text is now costed wrong.

Who qualifies, and for how long

The ICT route is not an ordinary work permit. It does not open the Latvian labour market; it moves one named person inside one corporate structure, which is why the law defines each category separately in Section 1.

A manager is transferred as a highly qualified employee whose main duty is to direct and supervise the work of other staff and to carry out personnel functions, working to instructions from the board or an equivalent body. A specialist works at one of the companies in the group, holds essential and specific knowledge of the company's fields of business, its methods or its management, and is judged on the level of qualification and professional experience that knowledge implies. A trainee holds a university degree, is transferred inside the group to develop professionally or to learn the group's business methods, and is paid during the placement in Latvia.

Read down that column and the planning conclusion writes itself. The ICT route no longer buys a longer stay than an ordinary hire, and the EU Blue Card is now the only employment based permit in the Latvian system that runs beyond twelve months. A group posting a qualified engineer who would clear the 2723 euro Blue Card threshold, or 2178 euro in a shortage occupation, is choosing between a one year ICT permit and a two year card.

The Latvian rules sit on top of Directive 2014/66/EU on intra-corporate transfers of third country nationals. The directive sets the shared structure across the bloc, including mobility: a holder of an ICT permit issued in one member state may, under stated conditions, also work at a group company in another member state without repeating the whole procedure. For a group with plants in several countries, that is the practical reason to choose this route over an ordinary work permit.

The PMLP procedure, timing and cost

The case starts at the Latvian company, not with the worker. The receiving employer files an invitation that names the post, the salary and the length of the transfer, and evidences the corporate link between the sending company outside the European Union and the host company in Latvia. That request costs 17.00 euro on paper or 10.00 euro through latvija.lv, plus 85.00 euro for the invited person's right to employment, and PMLP decides it within five working days, or ten if it checks further.

Only then does the worker apply for the residence permit, either at a Latvian diplomatic mission in the country of residence or, if he is already lawfully in Latvia, at a PMLP office. The file carries the transfer documents: the employment contract or assignment letter stating the salary payable in Latvia, proof of qualification, health insurance with a liability limit of at least 42 600 euro, and evidence of accommodation.

PMLP processing times are tied to the state fee the applicant chooses. The review costs 160.00 euro within 30 days, 280.00 euro within 10 working days, or 560.00 euro within 5 working days (PMLP price list, updated 18 March 2026). Once the decision is taken, the card is produced within ten working days, or within two on request. A visa or document handling fee is payable at the mission on top, when the file is lodged abroad.

Those are the intervals Latvia publishes, and they are the only ones worth putting in a plan. The clock on the review starts on the day PMLP accepts the file as complete, not on the day the first document arrives. The legs on either side of it have no published duration at all: legalisation of a diploma or an employment reference issued outside the European Union depends on the apostille authority in the sending country, and a missing translation sends the file back without a decision. Those legs have to be measured against the sending country each time rather than assumed from a schedule.

One requirement has to be checked case by case. Directive 2014/66/EU requires that the worker was already employed within the group before the transfer, and each member state fixes that minimum period itself, within a range the directive caps at twelve months. The figure applied in Latvia should be read on likumi.lv on the day the application is prepared.

What this changes for the employer

The practical difference between the ICT route and an ordinary work permit runs two ways. An ICT permit is tied to the group and to the named post, so the worker cannot use it to move to a different Latvian employer, and at the end of the maximum period the group must either return him to the sending country or move him onto another residence basis. The ordinary labour market route binds the worker to the company more loosely but demands a vacancy that has stood free for ten working days at the State Employment Agency and a different evidence pack; its structure is set out in the Latvia employment residence permit steps.

It also helps to know what the ICT permit is not. It is not the single permit that combines work and residence for ordinary labour market hires, described in the single permit directive explained, and the two documents answer different questions. How the article numbers and the durations moved this September is set out in Latvia's new Immigration Law text.

Before collecting any paperwork, answer three questions: which of the three categories the post falls into, how long the person has already been employed inside the group, and whether a twelve month ceiling is enough for what the plant actually needs. Those answers decide whether the ICT route is the right one at all.