AKPA employment approval for hiring a foreign worker in Albania

The National Employment and Skills Agency approves the employment of a foreign worker before the border and migration authority can issue the single permit. The approval turns on three things: the working conditions in the contract, the public posting of the vacancy, and the absence of a suitable candidate from the priority lists.

The rule sits in article 74 of law no. 79/2021 on foreigners, rewritten in full by law no. 43/2025 of 26 June 2025. The article never calls the procedure a labour market test, but it builds one: AKPA confirms whether the employer managed to mediate suitable candidates against the required profile before approving the employment of a non Albanian national.

What AKPA checks before approving

Article 74, point 6, gives the agency three criteria. Pay, working hours and other conditions must comply with Albanian labour legislation, the requirements of the special articles for that employment ground must be met, and no worker from the priority categories may be available for that post.

The priority list is set out in point 8 of the same article, and it decides who AKPA looks at before it looks at your candidate.

For intra corporate transferees, highly qualified workers, contractual service suppliers and athletes, point 7 of article 74 narrows the review to the first two criteria only. Those profiles need no proof that the domestic market cannot fill the post.

Two deadlines that fix the start date

Two numbers decide when the request can be filed. Article 74, point 9, requires the vacancy to stay published on the employment services portal for no fewer than five calendar days, renewals excepted. Point 11 requires the vacancies to have been posted in the online system no later than 90 days before the employment approval request is submitted.

Read together, the posting has to be older than five days and younger than 90 days. A posting made in January will not carry a request filed in May, and the employer restarts the publication phase exactly when it thought that phase was finished.

Since August 2026, when the joint instruction of the minister responsible for the economy and innovation and the minister responsible for internal affairs cut the AKPA response from ten working days to one working day, the publication phase has become the longest part of the employment check. The approval itself now closes inside a day; preparing it takes weeks.

Article 74, point 10, adds a third deadline. When AKPA asks for further information on pay, working hours or other conditions, the employer has to supply it within one week of the date of the request. That week does not pause because the person holding the file is on leave.

Refusal, revocation and appeal

Article 75 lists the grounds for refusal. Three of them have nothing to do with the candidate: the employer has not registered its business with AKPA and has not published its vacancies, it has not settled the principal on social insurance contribution liabilities, or it carries out no economic activity. A fourth is the refusal of an unemployed jobseeker referred by the relevant employment office who met the advertised conditions.

An approval already granted can also be withdrawn. Article 76 allows revocation when the foreign worker has been employed on conditions less favourable than those of Albanian citizens. That links the hiring file to the later labour inspection: the conditions declared on the job offer form are the ones checked at the workplace.

Against a refusal or annulment order, article 73, point 2, gives an administrative appeal to the immediately superior authority, which must conclude within 30 days of filing. The real cost of a refusal is not the repeated fee but those 30 days plus a restarted five day publication phase, roughly six weeks on top of the original plan.

European corridors fail in similar ways, catalogued in work permit refusal failure modes, while the steps that follow approval are in the Albanian single permit procedure. Since annual quotas were repealed in 2025, this approval stage is the only quantitative filter the market has left, as set out in Albania's repealed employment quotas.

A precise job description, with the real certificates, languages and location, clears this stage faster than a broad one, because a narrow profile produces fewer suitable candidates on the priority lists. How Werklist divides that work with the employer is set out on the employers page.