Digital nomads will soon have the option of working from Italy once the nation launches its visa program for remote employees.
Earlier in the week, leaders passed the law that will start the visa creation process.
Luca Carabetta, Five Star Movement MP, was the one to promote the new visa. Carabetta expressed happiness about the law’s passage while also suggesting that the next steps are complex.
Now that the law has passed, officials will need to introduce a bill to implement it. The bill will have to include procedural definitions and other details.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will have a hand in crafting the visa’s specifics, perhaps even guiding the process.
This visa shouldn’t come as a complete surprise; earlier, the Italian government shared plans to invest €1 billion to make small villages more appealing to remote workers.
Around 2,000 small Italian towns are in a state of neglect, with fewer than 75% of families having internet access. Leaders want to fix the internet issues so that digital nomads might stay a while and contribute to local economies.
Italy isn’t the first European nation to try and appeal to international remote workers and offer digital nomad visas. Others include Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Portugal, Romania, and Spain.
If enough eligible digital nomads apply for the new visas, the countries that offer them could see tremendous economic benefits.
Such benefits are significant in light of how badly the COVID-19 pandemic wounded the worldwide economy. Many nations are only beginning to recover.
The number of remote workers to take advantage of digital nomad visas remains to be seen. Still, the outlook is positive: Many employees have refrained from going back to the office and therefore have greater freedom to travel.