Non-EU workers: the ‘click day’ process gets underway again
The ‘click day’ process for the admission of non-EU workers in 2027 begins on Friday 23 October. On 23 October, the pre-loading phase for applications opens; employers and families will then need to submit these applications during the click days in January and February 2027. A total of 165,850 places have been made available for next year under the three-year immigration quota decree for 2026–2028 (Prime Ministerial Decree of 2 October 2025): 62,850 for non-seasonal employees, 14,000 for those employed in domestic care, and 89,000 for seasonal employees in agriculture and tourism.
It was Decree-Law 145/2024 that made the pre-loading of applications a key step in the entry procedure for non-EU workers, with the aim of carrying out checks in advance – including through the cross-referencing of databases – and of preventing fraud and irregularities. Only pre-loaded applications may be submitted on the first day of the ‘click days’, whilst others may be submitted on subsequent days, up to 31 December 2027: they will therefore have far fewer chances of being accepted, as the quotas are usually exhausted within a few minutes on the ‘click days’.
The crackdown has succeeded in reducing the flood of applications (in 2024 there were over 700,000, a third of which came from Campania), but the number of applications remains far higher than the number of places available.
Data for 2026
According to figures provided to *Il Sole 24 Ore* on Monday by the Ministry of the Interior, 246,986 applications were submitted during the ‘click days’ in January–February 2026 and up to 2 October this year, which is 50 per cent more than the 164,850 places provided for in the three-year immigration quota decree for 2026.
The greatest imbalance is in the area of home care, where there were 50,701 applications – more than three times the allocated quota of 13,600 places. Two figures, however, still point to an anomaly in applications for this sector, despite the fact that the demand for domestic carers is undoubtedly high. 79.9 per cent of applications for work permits for non-EU workers in the domestic sector submitted in 2026 relate to men, whilst only 20.1 per cent relate to women. This is strange, given that 90 per cent of those employed in the sector are women. Furthermore, 59 per cent of applications for work permits are for workers from Bangladesh (22 per cent), India (16 per cent), Egypt (11 per cent) and Morocco (10 per cent); and, even amongst these nationalities, men clearly outnumber women. However, the main nationalities of foreign workers employed in the sector are Ukrainian and Filipino. A significant proportion of the applications for work permits in the domestic sector may therefore be driven by an attempt to bring in non-EU citizens who are unlikely to end up working as care assistants. According to Andrea Zini, president of Assindatcolf, ‘it would be advisable to introduce gender quotas, that is, places reserved for women for entry into the domestic sector. Furthermore, it would be very useful to increase the number of places outside the quota system – currently set at 10,000 for people aged over 80, people with disabilities and children under six – specifically for the three-year period 2026–2028’.
