There is no shortage of truck driver jobs abroad with visa sponsorship. The International Road Transport Union put Europe’s unfilled HGV positions at around 426,000 in its 2024 analysis, up from 233,000 a year earlier, and its more recent framing puts the gap nearer half a million. Employers across Poland, Lithuania, Germany and the Baltics recruit outside the EU as a matter of routine.
So why is it hard to get into? Because the visa is not the bottleneck. Your licence is. A commercial driving entitlement does not cross a border the way a job offer does, and almost nothing written about this subject says so.
What you actually need, and it is three things
To drive a lorry commercially anywhere in the EU you need all of these, not one of them:
| Requirement | What it means |
|---|---|
| Category C or C+E licence | C is a rigid lorry, C+E is articulated. C+E is what international haulage runs on and what employers actually want. |
| Driver CPC | The Certificate of Professional Competence, required across the EU. It appears on the licence itself as Code 95, so an employer can see at a glance whether you hold it. |
| Group 2 medical | A stricter medical standard than an ordinary car licence, covering eyesight, blood pressure and certain conditions. |
On age: you can hold the initial CPC qualification at 18, or take the accelerated route at 21. That matters if you are young, because an employer hiring for international routes will usually want the older entitlement and some experience with it.
The Driver CPC is set out in EU law, which is why it applies the same way in every member state and why an employer in Lithuania and one in Germany will ask you for exactly the same thing.
Your licence probably does not transfer
This is the part that costs people months. A category C or C+E entitlement issued outside the EU is not automatically valid for commercial work inside it, and the Driver CPC is a separate qualification you will very likely have to sit regardless of how many years you have driven.
Even UK issued HGV licences are no longer automatically recognised across the EU after Brexit, which tells you how little goodwill there is in this system for licences from further afield.
The European Commission published an IRU led study called STEER2EU in February 2026, mapping how all 27 member states handle third country drivers and recommending that qualification recognition be standardised. That it needed writing tells you the position today: recognition is handled country by country, and the answer you get in Poland is not the answer you get in Germany.
The practical consequence. Ask a prospective employer two questions before anything else: will they sponsor the CPC training, and will they support the licence exchange or re-test. In a shortage this severe, plenty of hauliers will do both, and the ones that refuse are telling you how badly they need you.
Where the work is
| Country | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Lithuania | On the shortage occupations list | Names international freight and passenger transport drivers specifically. Being listed removes the work permit and the labour market test entirely. |
| Poland | On the shortage occupations list | Lorry, bus and tram drivers all appear. Employers are used to sponsoring and processing is quick by European standards. |
| Germany | Professional drivers are a bottleneck occupation | The largest logistics market in Europe, and a recognised vocational qualification opens any qualified job since November 2023. |
| Japan | Specified Skilled Worker, automobile transportation | Added in March 2024. Note that driving in Japan needs a Japanese licence, so conversion is on top of the visa and the exams. |
Lithuania is the most concrete of these because its list works by occupation code rather than job title. Two codes matter to you: 833209 for international freight transport vehicle drivers and 833103 for international passenger transport. If your work matches one, your employer does not need a work permit for you at all. Details in our guide to the Lithuanian shortage occupations list.
If you operate plant rather than lorries, the same list separately names excavator, bulldozer, road grader and tower crane operators, which is a route people in construction plant overlook entirely.
One rule change that is worth knowing
Directive (EU) 2024/1233, published on 30 April 2024, recast the EU’s single permit rules. The change that affects you directly: a decision on a single permit application must now be made within 90 days, down from four months.
Ninety days is still a wait, but it is a deadline rather than an open question, and it is now the same deadline in every member state. If an agent tells you the paperwork will take six months, they are either adding their own delay or talking about the licence rather than the permit.
The order to do this in
- Establish what your licence is worth in the country you are targeting, before you apply for anything. This is the long pole and it varies by country.
- Find out whether you need the Driver CPC from scratch. Assume yes unless told otherwise.
- Book the Group 2 medical. Cheap, quick, and occasionally the thing that ends the plan, so find out early.
- Then approach employers, and ask specifically whether they fund CPC training and licence conversion.
Country detail: the Polish work visa, Germany’s bottleneck professions and Japan’s Specified Skilled Worker visa. Driving is also one of the trades behind our guide to work visas that do not require a degree, and the same certification problem shapes welder jobs abroad.
Browse driving and logistics roles with visa sponsorship on our board.
Last checked September 2026. Shortage figures are the IRU’s estimates rather than official statistics, and licence recognition is decided country by country, so confirm your own entitlement with the licensing authority where you intend to work.
