EU Blue Card for Chefs: Does It Fit a Restaurant Hire?

Restaurant owners in Europe often hear that the EU Blue Card is the easy, EU wide work permit, and ask whether it can bring in a chef from Japan. For most chefs the honest answer is no. The Blue Card is built for "highly qualified employment", and both of its core tests, a higher education qualification and a high salary, work against a typical kitchen hire. This guide explains why, shows where it can work, and points to the routes that usually fit better. Figures are as of September 2026.

1. What the EU Blue Card is

The Blue Card is set by Directive (EU) 2021/1883, which each member state implements in national law. A few points shape everything else:

• Not every EU country takes part. The directive's recitals record that Denmark and Ireland are not bound by it. The UK has left the EU and has its own system; see hiring a Japanese chef in the UK after 2025.
• National schemes continue alongside it. Article 3(3) says the directive does not stop member states issuing other residence permits for highly qualified work. Many countries have national routes that suit chefs better.
• The contract must run at least six months, or be a binding job offer for highly qualified employment of that length (Article 5(1)(a)).

2. The two tests: qualification and salary

Qualification

The applicant needs "higher professional qualifications", which the directive defines as either a higher education qualification or "higher professional skills". Higher professional skills can be accepted in two ways:

• For the occupations in Annex I, professional experience at a level comparable to higher education, over the period set in the annex. Annex I covers ICT service managers (ISCO-08 133) and ICT professionals (ISCO-08 25), with three years of experience.
• For any other occupation, only where national law or procedure provides for it, at least five years of professional experience at a level comparable to higher education qualifications, relevant to the job.

Salary

Each member state sets a minimum salary threshold of at least 1.0 and no more than 1.6 times its average gross annual salary (Article 5(3)). A member state may set a lower threshold, at least 80% of the normal one, for occupations it considers in shortage and for recent graduates.

3. The degree problem for chefs

Most Japanese chefs trained through apprenticeship and years in kitchens, sometimes with a culinary school diploma, rather than a university degree. That leaves two possibilities:

1. The chef has a degree. Some do, often in an unrelated subject. Whether an unrelated degree is accepted depends on each country's rules, so check before you build an application around it.
2. The country accepts five years of experience in place of a degree. This is optional under the directive, and the experience must be "at a level comparable to higher education qualifications". Germany, for example, requires a German or comparable foreign academic degree at ISCED level 6 or above, with an experience based exception only for IT specialists. Hungary's immigration office says it accepts a relevant high level of professional experience of a specified period. We found no official guidance applying that to cooks.

Even where the experience route exists, a restaurant would have to show that running a sushi counter is highly qualified employment comparable to graduate work. That is an argument for an executive chef running a multi site operation, not for a line cook.

4. Salary thresholds in three countries

These are floors for the whole package the rules count, not targets. For a sense of how far they sit from typical chef pay in each market, see sushi chef salary by country. In most European cities, a head chef at a single restaurant is paid well below these levels.

5. When it does fit

The Blue Card is realistic when all of these are true:

• The role is senior: executive chef, culinary director, or head of food for a group, with management, menu development and training responsibility.
• The candidate has a university degree, or you are hiring in a country that accepts the five year experience route and can document that experience in detail.
• You can pay above the national threshold on a contract of at least six months.

When it fits, it is worth the paperwork. In Hungary, for example, the immigration office says the card is valid for up to four years and can be extended for up to four years at a time.

6. What to use instead

• National specialty cook routes. Germany has a specific route for specialty cooks (§11(2) of the Employment Ordinance, limited to two per restaurant). See hiring a Japanese chef in Germany.
• National skilled worker or highly skilled migrant schemes with lower or different tests. See the country guides for the Netherlands, France and Spain.
• Working holiday arrangements for chefs aged 18 to 30. Japan has arrangements with 20 EU member states; see working holiday rules for Japanese chefs in Europe.
• Intra-corporate transfer if you are part of a group that already employs the chef outside the EU.

General information checked against EU legislation and official national immigration pages in September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. Each member state implements the Blue Card differently and updates thresholds regularly. Confirm current requirements with the immigration authority of the country where the chef will work.