Recruiting a skilled employee through Reactivate 35+ support

Financial support under Reactivate 35+ facilitates the recruitment of unemployed professionals aged 35+ from another EU country.

The European Commission project helps employers in recruiting employees from another EU country and job seekers in finding employment within the EU. The employee must be aged 35 or more.

Financial support may be granted to the employer to cover some of the costs of induction training and integration to the new country.

The amount of support granted to the employer is determined on the basis of the type of integration programme provided and the country in which the employer is situated. The amount of support is about 810–2000 euros/employee.

Conditions for financial support

  • The employee to be hired must be a citizen of the EU (not Switzerland or Liechtenstein) aged 35 or more who is legally resident in an EU Member State (not Switzerland or Liechtenstein) If you are hiring someone from Norway or Iceland, please, use the Swedish project.
  • The employee to be hired must be an unemployed job seeker or a part-time working job seeker
  • The employer must provide at least, professional induction training, language training, settlement facilitation
  • An employer that may be eligible for support: has a staff of no more than 250 employees, is legally established in an EU country, concludes a labour contract of the minimum duration of six months with the job seeker, with the salary and work conditions compliant with the national labour law, offers a labour contract that may concern full-time or part-time work but no less than 50% of full time equivalent.

The employee may also apply for support for the job interview trip and relocation.

Reactivate projects are run by the three different EU countries - Sweden, Italy and Germany.

Swedish project

If you are planning to hire an employee from another EU country or Norway or Iceland, you can apply financial support for integration programme from the Swedish project. This project combines two EU mobility schemes, namely Your first Eures job (18–35 years old) and Reactivate (+35 years old).
In order to apply for the support, please, contact the nearest Eures adviser.

In order to receive the support, you will need to fill in two forms which can be found in the project’s website under the title ‘Information to employers’ -> ‘How to apply’. One of the forms is the actual application form and the other a template for the integration programme, which works on tick-box basis.
The amount of the support depends on the extent of the integration programme and the destination country. If you are a Finnish employer and provide your employee basic integration programme, you can receive 1390 euros. If the programme is comperehensive, you can receive 1750 euros.

Please see the application forms in order to find out the requirements set for a basic or comprehensive integration programme. If you are hiring more than one employee, you can apply the support for each of the candidates. Please note that the project reserves the right to change the amount of the support.

Italian project

The Italian project helps jobseekers and employers to meet. Jobseekers can upload their CV to the project’s database and employers their job vacancies. The project helps employers in the recruitment process, e.g. in pre-selection and marketing. Furthermore, employers can receive financial help on the basis of the integration programme provided for the employee. For Finnish employer, the amount of subsidy is from 1390 to 1750 euros per employee and varies according to the extent of the programme (basic-advanced).

German project

The German projects is aimed at jobseekers who wish to enter the German labour market. Unfortunately, the project does not offer financial support for employers.

More information

More about the projects on the Eures portal. You can also ask further information about applying the support from your local TE office or Eures advices.