Europe is looking increasingly towards North Africa for professional HGV drivers as the road transport industry struggles to overcome a shortage that has now reached more than half a million drivers.

A new EU-supported initiative will train professional drivers in Morocco and Egypt, with selected candidates given a structured pathway into employment with European transport operators.

The Skilled Driver Mobility for Europe II (SDM4EU II) project is designed to test safe, legal and demand-led recruitment corridors between North Africa and the European Union.

Under the programme, 600 professional drivers will be trained – 300 in Morocco and 300 in Egypt.

Of those, 200 drivers will be supported through the mobility process towards employment in Europe. Moroccan drivers will be matched with operators in Italy, while Egyptian candidates will be prepared for opportunities with Romanian operators.

The programme runs from 2026 to 2028 and is backed through the EU-funded Migration Partnership Facility.

More than simply recruiting drivers

Significantly, the project isn’t designed as a straightforward overseas recruitment exercise.

Candidates will go through a process covering selection, technical training, language preparation, employer matching and legal labour mobility.

Support will continue after drivers arrive in their destination country, with integration, employment and retention included in the programme.

Another 30 trainers will be trained as part of the initiative, helping Morocco and Egypt develop their own professional driver training capacity.

IRU, which is participating as a technical partner, will help develop training and certification standards so drivers meet applicable European and national professional and road-safety requirements.

That is particularly important because one of the major obstacles to recruiting HGV drivers outside the EU is the difference between national qualifications and Europe’s professional driver requirements.

Recognition of qualifications, CPC requirements, visas and work permits can all create obstacles for both drivers and employers.

The project is therefore attempting to establish a recruitment model that could potentially be replicated elsewhere.

502,000 drivers short

The initiative comes against the backdrop of an extraordinary shortage of professional drivers.

According to the latest IRU research, Europe has around 502,000 unfilled truck-driving positions, equivalent to approximately 13 per cent of the workforce.

More worryingly, Europe’s ageing driver population means the problem could become considerably worse over the coming years.

The consequences are already affecting transport capacity. IRU says two-thirds of European operators have turned down new contracts because they cannot find sufficient drivers.

Recruiting more young people and women into the industry remains essential, but IRU argues that domestic recruitment by itself will not be sufficient to close the gap.

That is why legal international driver mobility is moving much further up the European transport agenda.

Blueprint for wider recruitment?

The significance of SDM4EU II therefore extends well beyond the 200 drivers expected to enter the European employment pathway.

The project is effectively testing whether Europe can establish a repeatable system through which professional drivers can be trained outside the EU to European standards and subsequently recruited by European transport companies through legal and transparent channels.

The stated ambition includes capturing lessons that could be used for future EU Talent Partnership corridors.

If successful, the Morocco–Italy and Egypt–Romania routes could therefore provide a blueprint for considerably larger recruitment programmes involving other Member States and third countries.

There are important safeguards. Third-country drivers employed through the programme are expected to receive the same applicable working and employment conditions as EU drivers, while the initiative also includes mentoring and monitoring after arrival.

What about Ireland?

That raises an obvious question for the Irish road haulage industry.

Should Ireland be examining similar structured recruitment arrangements?

Irish operators face many of the same demographic and recruitment pressures as their European counterparts. Increasing domestic participation, improving the attractiveness of professional driving and expanding training must remain priorities.

But Europe’s experience increasingly suggests that these measures may have to be supplemented by controlled international recruitment.

Ireland therefore needs to consider whether its existing system is sufficiently straightforward for an experienced professional driver from outside the EU to obtain the necessary qualifications, recognition and employment permissions to work for an Irish operator.

The North African pilot is particularly interesting because it attempts to deal with those issues before drivers arrive, rather than leaving individual transport companies and drivers to negotiate a complicated combination of immigration, licensing and professional qualification requirements.

For smaller haulage businesses without dedicated recruitment or HR departments, such a structured approach could prove particularly valuable.

Europe’s HGV driver shortage has already passed the 500,000 mark, while hundreds of thousands of existing drivers are approaching retirement.

The Morocco and Egypt initiative will not solve that crisis on its own.

But it could signal something much more significant.

Europe is beginning to build an organised international recruitment pipeline for professional drivers – and Ireland needs to decide whether it wants to be part of the next phase.