Italian Startup Visa Requirements

In recent years, the Italian Ministry of Economical Development has set up a Technical Committee (“Italy Start-up Visa” Technical Committee) to evaluate startup proposals from non-EU citizens. The Committee is composed by representatives of national associations that have strong connections, in several areas of expertise, with the startup environment. Associations are, as follows.

• The Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AIFI);
• the Association of Italian Science and Technology Parks (APSTI);
• the Italian Business Angels Network Association (IBAN);
• the Network for the Exploitation of University Research (NETVAL);
• the Association of Incubators and Italian Academic Business Plan Competitions (PNICube);

The Committee has developed a specific application form (downloadable at italiastartupvisa.mise.gov.it) where applicants are required to provide their educational and employment history. Moreover, applicants should provide detailed information about their business plan and model, the product or service that their start-up aims to develop and deliver and their market.

As far as the required financial resources are concerned, applicants are requested to provide evidence of possession of at least € 50,000 for the development of their start-up process. Evidence of financial resource availability has to be provided as part of the application process submitted to the Committee. Resources can include funding from different sources, such as venture capital funds, investor’s own funding, crowd-funding ( as regulated by the law on financial intermediation), funding provided by the Italian or other governments or non-governmental organisation.

Evidence of possessions of the required funds can be provided by the bank where the funds are held and is to be delivered with the issuing of one or more letters to the Committee.

Applicants are also required to include a declaration stating that they will use the aforementioned funding to establish a start-up in the country.

The Committee recognises as “start-ups” those new business that are closely linked with the development and delivery of technology-related services or products. Decree 179/2012 provides the definition of “start-up”, which is to be incorporated as a limited company or as a cooperative under the Italian law. Otherwise the start-up can be incorporated as a European company under the EU law. In both cases, the company has to be domiciled in Italy. Company start-up status lasts 4 years, unless it is listed on a regulated market or on a multilateral trading system. In order to maintain the start-up status the company must not exceed € 5,000,000 in sales and dividends must not be distributed.

In addition, startup companies must meet the following requirements:

• The head office must be located in Italy;
• Technological innovation must be the only sector where the start-up company is engaged;
• The start-up company must have not been created from a corporate merger or division of a company or an already established line of business;
• Startup companies must also meet at least one of the following criteria:
  • It must dedicate 15% of total expenses to R&D (Research and development)
  • At least one-third of the people employed must include PhD students or graduates or people who have spent at least 3 years in research. Should this requirement not be met, at least two-thirds of the personnel must include people with a master’s degree
  • The start-up company must own, have filed or licensed a patent, industrial property right or original software that has be registered with the SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers)

Once the application is submitted to the Committee and documentary evidence of funding availability is provided, the Committee can proceed to the application evaluation. The first aspect undergoing evaluation is the factual availability of funding, which, once again, must be of at least € 50,000 Euro. Should the evaluation be positive, the applicant obtains a Certificate of No Impediment to enter Italy. The document is issued, via e-mail, by police headquarters of the locality where the applicants will eventually set a start-up business. The applicant and their diplomatic-consular mission are informed via e-mail and the Italian Startup Visa contact points within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Interior Ministry and the Labour Ministry are contacted.

Once the Certificate of No Impediment is received, the applicant is required to deliver it to their competent embassy or consulate. Moreover, applicant should include the application form for the Committe’s Certificate of No Impediment and the documents proving the possession of the required minimum financial resources and evidence that they have found accommodation in Italy, as required by Article 26 of Legislative Decree 286/1998.

Several reasons can be taken into account to choose Italy for a new start-up business. Italy is very well-known for its art, its culture, its creativity and the quality of its manufacturing. These are only some of the qualities of the Italian production chains, which perfectly blend the Italian culture and lifestyle with sheer artistic expression. Moreover, Italy offers a network of high-quality universities and educational standards are among the best in Europe. This is generally translated with a guarantee of skilled professionals, as proven by our manufacturing industry.

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