The EU Blue Card salary threshold is a band, not a number: 1.0 to 1.6 times national average pay

There is no EU Blue Card salary threshold. There is a European rule about how each member state must build its own, and the two are not the same thing. Article 5(3) of Directive (EU) 2021/1883 reads: “The salary threshold referred to in the first subparagraph shall be set by the Member State concerned, after consulting the social partners according to national practices. It shall be at least 1,0 times, but not higher than 1,6 times, the average gross annual salary in the Member State concerned.” ¹

The structure of that sentence carries the whole point. The directive fixes a multiplier range. It fixes neither the multiplier, nor a salary, nor the statistical series it is applied to beyond naming it as the average gross annual salary of the state concerned. The bounds are written in the directive with a comma decimal separator; they are 1.0 and 1.6.

Two national variables, not one European constant

A Blue Card threshold is the product of two decisions a member state makes for itself: the multiplier it selects inside the permitted range, and what its own average gross annual salary is taken to be. Both move, on different clocks — the multiplier only when the state resets it, the salary figure whenever the national series is revised.

The band is not the whole picture even within one country. Article 5(4) creates a derogation from paragraph 3 for shortage professions, so the 1.0 to 1.6 band is not unconditional across every case. The verified text establishes that the derogation exists and what it derogates from; it does not tell us the terms on which a profession qualifies, or what the derogation permits once one does. That is a question for the national implementing measure.

What else the recast fixed

The recast is Directive (EU) 2021/1883 of 20 October 2021 “on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purpose of highly qualified employment, and repealing Council Directive 2009/50/EC”, published at OJ L 382/1 on 28 October 2021. Article 31 required member states to bring the necessary laws, regulations and administrative provisions into force by 18 November 2023. Article 30 repeals the 2009 directive with effect from 19 November 2023. ¹

The admission condition that is genuinely uniform is the contract floor. Article 5(1)(a) requires an applicant to “present a valid work contract or, as provided for in national law, a binding job offer for highly qualified employment for a period of at least 6 months in the Member State concerned.” Six months is the European minimum, and unlike the salary threshold it is stated as a number rather than as a range. ¹

What Directive (EU) 2021/1883 fixes and what it leaves to the member state

Parameter	Article	Value
Minimum duration of work contract or binding job offer	5(1)(a)	6 months
Salary threshold — lower bound	5(3)	1.0 × national average gross annual salary
Salary threshold — upper bound	5(3)	1.6 × national average gross annual salary
Ratio between the two bounds (our arithmetic)	5(3)	1.6
Salary threshold itself	5(3)	set nationally
Transposition deadline	31	18 November 2023
Repeal of Directive 2009/50/EC effective	30	19 November 2023

Why a single European figure cannot exist

The practical consequence is provenance. Any Blue Card salary figure needs three attributes before it can be relied on: the state it belongs to, the date it applies from, and the reference period of the average-salary series behind it. A number carrying none of those is not a threshold.

The same design, one directive over

This is not an oddity of labour migration law. The original Posting of Workers Directive, published at OJ L 18/1 on 21 January 1997, took the identical approach to pay: Article 3(1)(c) of Directive 96/71/EC required host states to guarantee posted workers “the minimum rates of pay, including overtime rates”, and the next subparagraph handed the substance back — “the concept of minimum rates of pay referred to in paragraph 1 (c) is defined by the national law and/or practice of the Member State to whose territory the worker is posted”. ²

Directive (EU) 2018/957 revisited that provision more than two decades later and replaced the phrase with “remuneration, including overtime rates”. Member states had to adopt and publish the implementing measures by 30 July 2020 and to apply them from the same date. ³

Member states also legislate beside the directive

The frame is not the only route into a national labour market, and states build alongside it. Germany’s Gesetz zur Weiterentwicklung der Fachkräfteeinwanderung was signed on 16 August 2023 and promulgated in the Federal Law Gazette as BGBl. 2023 I Nr. 217 of 18 August 2023. ⁴

Section 20a of the Aufenthaltsgesetz now defines the Chancenkarte as “eine Aufenthaltserlaubnis zur Suche nach einer Erwerbstätigkeit oder nach Maßnahmen zur Anerkennung ausländischer Berufsqualifikationen” — a residence permit for seeking employment or pursuing recognition of foreign qualifications. Paragraph 3 allows it to be granted on either of two alternative grounds: that the person is a Fachkraft, or that they have obtained a sufficient score under the table in the annex to the Act for the characteristics set out in section 20b(1). ⁵

That is a points-and-search route, not a salaried admission. Two limits on what we can say here: the consolidated section page carries no entry-into-force date of its own, so we do not date the provision from it; and nothing verified for this piece establishes any member state’s actual Blue Card salary threshold, Germany’s included.

What to establish before quoting a threshold

Ask the destination state’s competent authority for its Blue Card salary threshold together with the date it takes effect and the reference year of the average gross annual salary it is derived from. Two of the three is not enough to audit the number later.

Establish separately whether the role sits in a shortage profession under that state’s implementation, because Article 5(4) opens a derogation from the general band, and what the general threshold would suggest need not be what that post has to pay.

Treat six months as the statutory floor for the contract or binding job offer, not as a norm, and check what the national measure requires above it.

Then diarise the review. Because the threshold is a multiple of a moving national series rather than a fixed sum, it can change without any legislature doing anything. A Blue Card figure recorded without its vintage decays quietly, and the directive that governs it will not announce the moment.