An ageing society, rapid technological developments combined with an increasing demand for (highly) skilled workers places the EU for great challenges. To implement and bring the EU Blue Card into practice was a means to partly alleviate the demand at least for the highly skilled labour and a first step to increase the attractiveness of the EU labour market. However, current researches show that that the impact of the Blue Card is limited. There is a variety of conditions set by the Member States (MS) which diminishes a user friendly procedure for highly skilled migrant workers. Furthermore, MS were allowed to develop their own national regulations for attracting (highly) skilled workers. This, in particularly the Netherlands led more to priorities in national regulations than to emphasising the Blue Card. The intentions of the EU to give the Blue Card a boost in the upcoming term will give way for new initiatives. The success of the new Blue Card version though, will also depend on the attention paid to ...