Luxembourg, a key financial centre of Europe, has indicated it would ease the visa regime for Indian professionals in certain specific sectors.
"We will look at relaxing visa rules in specific sectors," said Luxembourg's Economic Minister Jeann Krecke when it was pointed out by a group of visiting Indian journalists that the visa regime in Europe as a whole was not friendly to movement of professionals from India especially in the information technology sector.
"India," he said, "has a big pool of highly-skilled people and some countries of Europe are afraid of competition."
Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who will pay a five-day visit to India from February 19 this year, said his government would consider upgrading the Luxembourg embassy in Delhi as it did not have the facility to issue visas.
The curbs on access to European service market to Indian professionals has been a sore point in ties between New Delhi and European Union.
However, there is hope that Luxembourg could take a lead in changing the scenario as the country gets a daily dose of more than 100,000 people from its three neighbours Germany, France and Belgium who come to this country for employment.
There was a time in 1960s when foreigners consisted of more than 60 per cent of workers in the steel and mine sectors of Luxembourg.
There is general recognition in Luxembourg about the high quality of Indian accounting professionals and the country being an important centre of financial activities, their help could be taken.
The issue of movement of Indian professionals is expected to be a key topic when Asselborn and Krecke holds talks with their Indian counterparts in India in the next two months.
Foreign labour comprises more than 64 per cent of Luxembourg's working population and foreign residents make up a large part of the work force.
The labour market in Luxembourg is expanding steadily despite a typical economic situation in the European Union as a whole even though the unemployment rate has been on the rise since 2001, it is low in comparison with other European countries.