Italy's Article 23 route for Bangladeshi workers: what the 3 November seminar announced, how the law works, and what nobody has published yet

This article is about a route for workers, not students. We are writing it anyway because, since 3 November, "go to Italy free of cost" has been circulating on Facebook, and news like this is exactly what brokers build new packages around. Below, what was said at the seminar, what the law actually requires, and what nobody has confirmed yet are kept separate. Every source is listed at the end.

What happened on 3 November

On Tuesday 3 November 2026 the Embassy of Italy in Dhaka and its international partners held a seminar at the Dhaka Regency Hotel and Resort titled "Language, Civic and Professional Training for Skilled Migration to Italy". The embassy published its own account of the event on 4 November.

The chief guest was Dr Mahdi Amin, Adviser to the Prime Minister and spokesperson of the Prime Minister's Office. Italian Ambassador Antonio Alessandro, EU Ambassador Michael Miller and IOM's Chief of Mission in Bangladesh, Dr Laura Tomm-Bonde, also spoke. Most of the audience were about 300 trainees already learning Italian in these projects; the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and BOESL, the state-owned recruiting agency, were represented.

What was said, in short:

• The training is free. According to the embassy's press release, all costs are covered by the private entities that run the projects.
• Brokers are prohibited. The same release says any applicant found using an intermediary is automatically disqualified. The Business Standard and the Dhaka Tribune reported the organisers as saying that anyone found to have paid a middleman would be denied a visa.
• You apply yourself, through public announcements. Candidates apply individually, in response to a public call.
• Numbers are limited. The ambassador said there is a limit to how many migrants Italy can absorb, so Article 23 projects are necessarily limited in size. His advice to anyone not selected: wait for a better opportunity or build your future at home, and "don't look for shortcuts" that put your money and your life at risk.
• Soon, and small. Mahdi Amin said the process will begin on a limited scale very soon, that the government will try to bring the curriculum into technical training centres, and that it will try to issue expatriate cards to workers before they leave. He said many of the current trainees have had five or six months of training.

The event had been trailed a month earlier: on 13 October the ambassador met Mahdi Amin at the Prime Minister's Office and said Italy would hold this programme in November.

What Article 23 actually says

"Entry outside the quota" sounds like a shortcut. In law it is a chain, and every link is separate. This is the sequence according to the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policies' own page and the Guidelines it adopted on 7 July 2023 (Decreto Direttoriale n. 27):

Three things follow that the news coverage tends to lose.

Finishing the course is not a visa. An Italian employer still has to request you by name. The embassy made the point itself at the seminar: a nulla osta is not permission to enter Italy but authorisation for an employer to hire a worker, and the final visa decision is the embassy's.

Charging trainees is banned outright, not discouraged. The Guidelines make every project declare its funding and state that the project may not demand or receive any payment from trainees, directly or indirectly. That covers an "admission fee", a "seat booking" or a "processing charge" alike.

There is no back door. Trainees' names go into the Italian ministry's system and the list locks seven days after the course begins. "I'll add your name later" is not something the rules allow.

The two projects running in Bangladesh

The embassy named two projects, both run by the Italian private sector.

1. TASTE (Frontiere Skills): hotels and restaurants. Its full name is "Training for Accommodation, Service, Tourism and Employment – Bangladesh". The Ministry of Labour's approval letter gives it the number 2025_2350; the sponsor is an Italian cooperative (named in the letter as Healty Mind in Healty Body Società Cooperativa). It was filed on 25 September 2025, examined by the commission on 22 December 2025, and approved after the sponsor answered the commission's questions on labour demand and funding (16 January and 27 February 2026). Frontiere Skills' website lists seven courses: pizza maker, kitchen assistant, dining-room waiter, housekeeping, receptionist, accommodation and common-area operator, and men's hairdresser. Each runs to 550-600 hours with Italian to A1. Classes are held at the Dhaka Regency. The site says selection is done through BOESL.

2. Format: textiles. Format, an Italian social enterprise, is training textile workers; the embassy's press release calls the project "Tessere il Domani". It is not brand new: in July 2024 the Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported the same company training 100 workers in Bangladesh for textiles and welding, the first 50 of whom started on 8 March 2024.

Both projects train for specific jobs. There is no general "Italy work visa course"; for an electrician or a driver, no project has been announced.

What nobody has confirmed yet

This is the section that matters most, because gaps are what brokers fill.

• When new applications open: not published. Mahdi Amin said "very soon, on a limited scale" and gave no date.
• Age and education requirements: not on any embassy, ministry or project page. Figures such as "18 to 45, SSC passed" are circulating online; we could not find them in any official source.
• How many places: no number has been announced. In a September interview the ambassador said "several hundred" Bangladeshi workers a year go to Italy this way, against about 10,000 work visas issued in 2025 overall.
• Where to apply: Frontiere Skills' website has no application form, and as of 14 November we found no notice about these projects on BOESL's notice page.

So anyone selling you "a seat in an Article 23 project" today is selling something that has not been publicly announced, and charging for it is prohibited by Italy's own rules.

Five questions that expose a broker

The organisers gave the arithmetic at the seminar: the Italian visa fee is 50 to 116 euros and the VFS fee 38 euros, a maximum of 154 euros in total. Brokers charge 10,000 to 15,000 dollars for the same visa, often with fake documents and false promises. If someone makes you an offer, ask:

1. 1What is the project called, and what is its Ministry of Labour approval number? Real projects have an approval letter, like TASTE's 2025_2350.
2. 2Do I pay anything, to anyone? If the answer is yes, stop there. Apart from official fees such as the passport and the embassy's visa fee, no money goes to any person.
3. 3Where is the public announcement? The rules require selection through a public call, not through somebody's contacts.
4. 4Which Italian employer, in which city, for which job? During training, the project has to tell trainees about job offers and their contract terms.
5. 5Who is "guaranteeing" the visa? Nobody can. The nulla osta comes from an Italian public office and the visa decision from the embassy.

More warning signs are in our guide to fake documents and agency fraud.

Where ScholarsDream stands

To be plain: we advise students on studying abroad; we do not send workers. We cannot get anyone into an Article 23 project, and neither can any other consultancy. If someone uses our name to ask for money for this programme, it is fraud.

For students: an Italian student visa and this work route are two completely separate doors. A student visa is not a work permit, and the honest version of the "study first, then work" promise is here. For someone who actually wants to work, a government work route like Article 23 is a far more honest path than a study visa bought as a work visa.

Do not confuse this with an unrelated programme: the ILO and BMET "Talent Partnership" project (2024-2027) is upskilling 3,000 workers for several EU countries. It is not Italy's Article 23 scheme.

Where to watch for news

Any new project or call should appear in three places: the Embassy of Italy in Dhaka's website, BOESL's notice page, and BMET. The seminar's organisers also told prospective workers to rely on the embassy and BMET. Do not act on a Facebook page, a YouTube video or a phone call without checking it against one of those three.

We will update this article when anything new is published, and change the date above when we do.