The European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Europe agreed this week that international graduates are allowed to take nine months after their graduation to search for a job within the whole European Union. In the meantime they may work at most fifteen hours a week to provide for basic livelihood.
‘The final agreement is only half of what we would have liked to see’, says chairman Fernando Galán of the European Students Union. ‘In earlier proposals of the European parliament the non-EU students received much more rights than in the current proposal.’ For example, the parliament suggested that graduates would receive eighteen months before they had to leave.
The agreement still has to be approved by the leaders of the EU member states. If that succeeds, countries have two years to implement the regulation.
The Netherlands has already given international graduates this opportunity to find a job for a while. Here graduates receive a year and meanwhile they are allowed to work unlimited hours.